Six

"Doc, you're crazy!" Dave yelled. "You should've been up here in a rubber room with us nuts a long time a—''

Adolf jumped at Dave's legs. The man backpedalled and swung the chair; it struck the demon's shoulder and knocked the thing sprawling against the wall. Mother was almost at Dave's feet, and Jack saw Frog suddenly heave loose from the door's inset and fall to the floor. Frog started bounding toward Dave, covering three or four feet at a leap. Dave saw it coming too, and he wheeled toward Frog to ward the beast off.

"Look out!" Jack warned, but he knew he was too late. Adolf had already leapt at the man, was scrabbling up Dave's leg. Mother pounced like a cat upon Dave's ankle, and the diamond fangs ripped through his white sock. It turned crimson. Dave whacked at Mother with the chair, missed, was off-balance and falling as Adolf plunged his claws into the man's chest and opened him up from breastbone to navel. Dave's stricken face turned toward Jack, and Jack heard him gasp: "The gun."

Then Dave hit the floor, with Adolf pinned and struggling beneath him, and a tide of blood streamed across the linoleum.

The gun, Jack realized. The gun in the security guard's holster.

He didn't remember taking the first step. But he was running toward the elevator, where the guard lay dead, and it occurred to him that his ravaged hands might not be able to hold the gun, or that it might be unloaded, or that he might not be able to pull it from the holster in time. All those things whirled through his mind, but he knew that without the gun he was meat to be devoured by Tim Clausen's best friends.

Tail lashing, Frog bounded from the floor at him before he could reach the elevator. He ducked, slipped in Dave Chambers's blood and fell as Frog leaped over his head. The end of the beast's tail slashed his left ear, and then he was skidding across the floor on his chest and bumped against the guard's corpse. He saw Adolf pulling his legs from underneath Dave, saw the demon's eyes widen with realization. Jack got one hand around the revolver's butt, popped the holster open with the other and drew the gun loose. The safety! he thought, and spent precious seconds fumbling to release the catch.

And then Mother was right in his face, the mouth opening with a hiss and the fangs straining. Her legs clutched at his shoulder, a breath of corruption washing at his nostrils. The fangs glittered, about to strike.

He pressed the revolver's barrel against her forehead and forced his index finger to squeeze the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Just an empty click.

Adolf cackled, wrenching his legs free and standing up.

Frog was bounding back along the corridor.

Mother grinned.

And Jack pulled the trigger again.

This time it fell on a loaded cylinder. The gun went off, almost jumping out of Jack's grip.

A hole in Mother's forehead sprayed brown fluid. Her grin turned to a rictus of what might have been agony, and she scurried backward. Adolf's cackle stopped cold.

Jack fired again. A piece of Mother's head flew off, and she was shrieking and dragging herself around in a mad circle. Frog leaped, landed on the side of Jack's neck with a wet grunt. He pressed the gun into its gelatinous, meaty-smelling body and shot—once, twice. Frog split open, oozing nastiness, and slithered away from him.

Jack tried to take aim at Mother again, but she was running like a wind-up toy gone berserk. A scrape of metal drew his attention. He looked at the opposite wall: Adolf was frantically pulling at a small metal grill. The vent! Jack thought, and his heart stuttered. If that bastard got into the vent . . . !

He fired at Adolf's back. At the same instant the .38 went off, Adolf wrenched the grill open. His left arm disappeared at the elbow in a mangle of tissue and fluid, and Adolf's body was slammed against the wall. The demon's head turned toward Jack, eyes ablaze with hatred. Jack pulled the trigger once more—and hit the empty cylinder again. The bullets were gone.

Adolf flung himself headfirst into the vent. Jack shouted "NO!" and scrambled across the dead guard, over the bloody floor to the vent; he shoved his arm in, his hand seeking. In the tube there was a scuttling, drawing away and down. Then silence but for the rattle of Jack's lungs.

He lay on his stomach, not far from the corpse of Dave Chambers. The ward smelled like a slaughterhouse. He wanted to rest, just curl his body up and let his mind coast down a long road into darkness—but Adolf was still in the hospital, probably following the vent's pipe to the lower floors, and he could decide to come out anywhere. Jack lay shivering, trying to think. Something Tim Clausen had said . . . something about ...

He feels so sorry for new life born into this world, the boy had said. It's the babies who need to be freed most of all.

And Jack knew why Tim's best friends had allowed him to be brought to the hospital.

All hospitals have a maternity ward.

There was a soft hiss beside his left ear.

Mother crouched there on trembling legs, part of her head blasted away and her face dripping brown ichor. Her tongue flicked out, quivering toward Jack, her eyes lazy and heavy-lidded. They were sated, hideous, knowing eyes; they understood things that, once set free, would gnaw through the meat and bone of this world and spit out the remains like gristle on barbarian platters. They were things that might rave between the walls of Jack's mind for the rest of his life, but right now he must shove away the madness before it engulfed him; he knew—and was sure Mother did, too—that Adolf was scrambling down through the vent toward the second floor, where the babies were. Mother leered at him, her duty done.

Jack got his hand around the .38's barrel and smashed the butt into her face. The wet, obscene skin split with a noise like rotten cloth. Barbed wire cut through Jack's bandaged fingers, and he lifted the gun and struck again. Mother retreated only a few paces before her legs gave out. Her eyes collapsed inward like cigarette bums. The mouth made a mewling noise, the diamond fangs snapping together. Jack lifted the gun and brought it down, heedless of the barbed-wire hair. Mother's head broke like a blister, and out of that cavity rose an oily mist that swirled up toward the ceiling and clung there, seething like a concentration of wasps. It bled through the ceiling tiles, leaving a stain as dark as nicotine and then it—whatever it had been—had escaped.

Mother's body lay like a rag. Jack pushed it aside and crawled to the elevator. The doors were still thumping impatiently against the guard's legs. Jack struggled to slide the corpse out, aware that each passing second took Adolf closer to the maternity ward. He got the legs out of the elevator, caught the doors before they closed and heaved himself inside, reaching up to hit the 2 button.

The doors slid shut, and the elevator descended.

Jack stood up. His legs immediately gave way again, and he fell to his knees. The front of his shirt was reddened by gore, the bandages hanging from his bloody hands. Black motes spun before his eyes, and he knew he didn't have much time before his body surrendered. The old gears and cables creaked, and the elevator jarred to a halt. Jack looked up at the illuminated numbers over the door; the number 5 was lit up. The doors opened, and a gray-haired doctor in a white lab coat took one step in before he saw Jack on the floor and froze.

"Get out," Jack rasped.

The doctor hesitated perhaps three seconds, then retreated so abruptly he hit an orderly in the hallway and knocked over a cart of medicines and sterilized instruments. Jack pressed the 2 button once more, and the doors closed. He watched the numbers change. As the elevator passed the third floor, Jack thought how sensible it would be to stay here all the way down to the lobby and scream for help once he got there. That was the thing to do, because he had no gun, no weapon, nothing to stop Adolf with. He was bloody and balanced on the edge of shock, and he knew he must've scared the doctor half to death. A grim smile lifted the corners of his mouth, because he knew there was no time to get to the lobby; by then, Adolf might have reached the maternity ward, and the thing's remaining claw would be at work amid the new flesh. Already there might be a pile of infant limbs scattered on the floor, and each second ended another life. No time . . . no time ...

Jack struggled to his feet. Watched the number 2 light up. The elevator halted, and the doors opened with a sigh.

There were no screams, no frantic activity on the second floor. As Jack emerged from the elevator, the two nurses on duty at the central station gaped up at him. One of them spilled a cup of coffee, brown liquid surging across the desk. Jack had never been to the maternity ward before, and corridors seemed to cut off in every direction. "The babies," he said to one of the nurses. "Where do you keep the babies?"

"Call security!" she told the other one, and the woman picked up the telephone, pressed a button and said in a quavering voice, "This is second floor. We need security up here, fast!"

"Listen to me." Jack knew Rosalee and the others must be still trying to explain what had happened, and they wouldn't understand where Adolf was headed. "Please listen. I'm Dr. Jack Shannon. I've just come from the eighth floor. You've got to get the babies out of here. I can't tell you why, but—"

"Luther!" one of the nurses shouted. "Luther!" The other woman had backed away, and Jack saw they both thought he was out of his mind. "I'm not crazy," he said, instantly regretting it; such a statement only made things worse. The nurse who'd called for Luther said, "Settle down, now. We're going to get somebody up here to help you, okay?"

Jack looked around, trying to get his bearings. A waiting room was on the left, people staring at him like frightened deer ready to bolt. On the right a sign affixed to the wall read MATERNITY and aimed an arrow down the corridor. Jack started along the hallway, one of the nurses yelling at him to stop and the other too scared to speak. He passed between rooms, leaving drops of blood on the floor and startling nurses and patients who saw him coming; they scattered out of his way, but one nurse grabbed his shoulder and he shoved her aside and kept going. A signal bell was going off, alerting security. He hoped these guards were quicker on their feet than the one upstairs had been.

He rounded a comer, and there was the large floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window where babies were displayed in their perambulators, the boys bundled up in pale blue and the girls in pink. Several friends and relatives of new parents were peering in through the glass at the infants as the maternity nurse continued her duties within. One of the visitors looked up at Jack, and the woman's expression changed from delight to horror. It took two more seconds for all of them to be aware of the bloodied man who'd just lurched around the comer. Another of the women screamed, and one of the men bulled forward to protect her.

Jack slammed his hand against the window. The nurse inside jumped, her eyes stunned above her surgical mask. "Get them out!" Jack shouted—but he knew she couldn't hear, because some of the babies were obviously crying and he couldn't hear those sounds, either. He tried again, louder:

"Get them out of—"

A pair of arms tightened around his chest from behind like a living straitjacket. "Hold it, buddy. Just hang loose. Guards are gonna be here right soon."

Luther, Jack thought. An orderly, and the size of a football linebacker from the thickness of those arms. The man had lifted him almost off the floor. "You and me gonna take a walk back to the elevators. Excuse us, folks."

"No! Listen . . ." The pressure was about to squeeze the breath out of him. Luther started dragging him along the corridor, and thrashing was useless. Jack's heels scraped the floor.

And there came another, higher scraping sound as well. Then the double crack of screws being forced loose. Jack's spine crawled; at the baseboard of the wall directly opposite the infant's nursery was a vent grill, and it was being pushed open from the other side.

Jack fought to get loose, but Luther hadn't seen and he clamped his grip tighter. The blood roared in Jack's head.

The grill came open with a squeal of bending metal, and from the vent leaped a small one-armed figure with burning topaz eyes. Adolf's head turned toward the horrified knot of ward visitors, then toward Jack and the orderly; the demon gave a grunt of satisfaction, as if expecting that Jack would be there. Luther's legs went rigid, but his grip didn't loosen from around Jack's chest.

Adolf sprang at the plate glass.

It hit with a force that shook the window, and the glass starred at the point of impact but did not shatter. Adolf fell back to the floor, landing nimbly on his feet. The woman was still screaming—a thin, piercing scream—but her protector's nerve had failed. Behind the glass the maternity nurse had come to the front of the room in an effort to shield the babies. Jack knew she wouldn't last more than a few seconds when Adolf broke through the window.

"Let me go, damn it!" he shouted, still struggling; Luther's arms loosened, and Jack slid out of them to the floor.

Adolf shot a disdainful glance at him, like a human might look at dogshit on the sole of a shoe. He jumped at the window again, hitting it with his mangled shoulder. The glass cracked diagonally, and at the center of the window a piece about the size of a man's hand fell away. Adolf clawed at the hole, talons scraping across the glass, but couldn't find a grip. The demon rebounded to the floor again but was leaping almost as soon as he'd landed. This time his claw caught the hole, and he kicked at the glass to finish the job.

The corridor was full of screaming and the crying of babies. Jack lunged forward and grabbed the demon's legs, and as he wrenched Adolf out of the widening hole a large section of the window crashed down, glass showering the nurse as she threw her body across the first row of perambulators.

The demon twisted and writhed in Jack's grip with the agility of a monkey. Jack slung Adolf against the wall, heard the crunch of its skull against the plaster; it got one leg free, contorted its body at the waist and the smashed head—half of it pulped and leaking—came up at Jack's hand. The razorblade teeth flashed before they snapped shut on Jack's index finger. Pain shot up his forearm and into his shoulder, but he kept his hand closed on the trapped leg. Adolf's teeth were at work, and suddenly they met through the flesh; the demon's head jerked backward, taking most of Jack's finger between the teeth.

Jack's hand spasmed with agony. The remaining four fingers opened and Adolf leaped to the floor,

The demon staggered, and Jack fell against the wall with his bitten and throbbing hand clutched to his chest. He hit an object just behind him, as Adolf swiped at his legs with the remaining claw and shredded the cuff of his trousers.

Then Adolf whirled toward the broken window once more, tried to jump for the frame but the muscular legs had gone rubbery. The demon reached up, grasped an edge of glass and began to clamber over it into the nursery.

Jack looked at Luther. The man—crewcut and husky, his face sallow and gutless—had backed almost to the corridor's comer. The nurse with the surgical mask was still lying across the first few infants, one arm outthrust to ward off Adolf's next leap. Adolf was almost over the glass, would be in the nursery within the following few seconds, and the thing was hurt but he would not give up before he'd slaughtered his fill. His head ticked toward Jack, and the oozing mouth stretched wide in a grin of triumph.

There was something metal pressed into Jack's spine. Something cylindrical. He turned, saw it was a fire extinguisher.

Adolf jumped from his perch on the edge of glass. Landed on the nurse, and began to slash at her back with long strokes that cut away her uniform and flayed off ribbons of flesh.

The fire extinguisher was in Jack's hands. His good index finger yanked the primer ring. There was a hiss as the chemicals combined, and the cylinder went cold. The nurse was screaming, trying to fight Adolf off. She slipped to the floor, and Adolf clung to the side of a perambulator, started drawing himself up and into it with his claw, the razor teeth bared. He reached for the pink-clad baby's skull.

"Here I am!" Jack yelled. "Ready or not!"

Adolf's misshapen head cocked toward Jack, teeth three inches away from infant flesh.

Jack pulled the cylinder's trigger. Cold white foam erupted from the nozzle, sprayed through the window in a narrow jet and struck Adolf on the shoulder and in the face. The baby squalled, but Adolf's caterwaul was an aural dagger. Blinded by the freezing chemicals, the demon toppled to the floor on his back, claw slashing at the air. Jack kept the spray going as Adolf tried to rise, fell again and started crawling across the floor, a little foam-covered kicking thing.

"Put it down!" someone shouted, to Jack's left. Two security guards stood there, and one of them had his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Put it down!" he repeated, and half-drew the gun from its holster.

Jack ignored the command. He knocked out the rest of the window's glass with the cylinder and stepped into the nursery, aimed the nozzle at Adolf and kept spraying as the creature writhed at his feet. Jack felt his mouth twist into a horrible grin, heard himself shout, "Die, you bastard! Die! Die!" He lifted the cylinder and smashed it down on the body; then again, striking at the skull. Bones—or what served as bones—cracked with brittle little popping sounds. Adolf's claw struck upward, blindly flailing. Someone had Jack's arm, someone else was trying to pull him away, the nurse was still screaming and the place was a bedlam of noise. Jack shook off one of the guards, lifted the cylinder to smash it down again, but it was snatched away from him. An arm went around his throat from behind.

Adolf's head—one eye as black as a lump of coal and the face mashed inward—surfaced from the chemical foam. The single topaz eye found Jack, and the razor teeth gleamed behind mangled lips. Adolf's claw locked around Jack's left ankle, began to winnow through the flesh.

Jack pressed his right foot against the grinning face and stomped all his weight down with the force of fury behind it.

The demon's skull cracked open, and what came out resembled a lump of intertwined maggots. Jack stomped that too, and kept stomping it until all the wriggling had ceased.

Only then did Jack let himself fall. Darkness lapped at his brain, and he was dragged under.