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Houston was no stranger to thunderstorms. A city on the Gulf Coast learned to deal with the sometimes violent weather that was brought to them by the Gulf Stream, and Houston had handled everything from barely-there mists to raging hurricanes with aplomb. The storm that rolled over the city now wasn't the worst it had ever seen, but it was nothing to sneeze at, either.
The thing was that it came up so suddenly. There had been nothing on the Doppler radar, then bang! there it was, dumping rain and ripping the sky with lightning and thunder. It had struck close to closing time, but there were still several hundred people who got thoroughly drenched hurrying across the walkway from Astroworld to the parking lot.
The rain was so heavy that the crew didn't even finish their final cleaning sweep of the day. The morning crew was alerted to come in a little early, if the weather let up enough to make it possible for them to do their jobs. The managers needn't have worried. The storm was intense, but fairly brief: it would be over long before dawn.
Lightning laced the sky, gilding the underbellies of the thick storm clouds with an eerie beauty, occasionally lancing down to strike, leaving behind air crackling with static electricity and reeking of ozone. While a lightning storm was always a matter of concern in a place that had so many tall buildings, there was only one significant lightning strike that night. No one was there to witness it, and no one was ever really aware that it had happened. It did not fell a tree, set a house on fire, or even fry someone's electronic appliances with a power surge, but it did do one thing that would affect several people the next day.
It struck something in Astroworld.
***
"Blair!" Jim hissed the name through clenched teeth, feeling his way along the narrow hallway in pitch darkness. He'd dialed his vision way up the moment they entered this hellhole, and seeing still wasn't easy for him. Blair, with his normal vision, would be effectively blind, and that wasn't safe, especially not here.
How had Blair gotten away from him? Granted, they'd been moving pretty fast in the confused panic that had resulted when they walked in on that scene in the kitchen. He winced at the memory. Christ, that was worse than anything I've ever seen, on the force or in the Rangers. Body parts everywhere, and that... that thing with blood on its mouth, starting to come after us.
Every bit of instinct, cop and Sentinel, had screamed at him to fight, to do something to the thing that was able to wreak such carnage, but there hadn't really been anything they could do. I honestly wish I hadn't left my gun in the hotel room. Shit, they passed that concealed weapon law here in Texas not so long ago, I could have brought it. He heard a scream from somewhere behind him and stiffened, then relaxed slightly when he realized that it was not Blair. Then he felt a little ashamed for being relieved.
He tuned his hearing up, searching for Blair's heartbeat, but there were so many in this building, all of them heavy and fast with terror or excitement. "Blair! Goddam it, where are you?" he growled. He didn't dare raise his voice. There was no telling what it might attract.
"Jim?" The hoarse whisper came from up ahead. Jim turned a corner that he had scarcely been able to see, and found himself looking down another long, narrow corridor. This one had what looked like an open space halfway down. There was a brief flash of light at the end of the hall, and Jim saw a door. It was heavy, metal plated: built to keep people out... or in. That had to be the exit.
Now Jim could distinguish Blair's thudding heartbeat from the others. It was close, very close. He eased forward, and almost wet his pants when Blair lunged out of a near invisible doorway to his left.
Blair clutched his lover's arm, panting. "Shit! I thought it was the way out, but it was just a dead end, and... and I ran into feet."
"Feet?"
"There's someone hanging in the middle of the hall in there." When Jim started back through the doorway, Blair stopped him. "Deader than disco, man. We gotta keep going."
Jim nodded toward the end of the hall. "I think that's the exit up there."
Blair looked. When he saw the open space, his face paled. "Oh, shit. We have to go through there to get to it." Jim knew that he was remembering what they had discovered in the last open space like that. The body stretched on the dark altar had glazed eyes, a cut throat, and intestines peeking wetly through a ragged hole in its middle. That had been bad, but when it had stirred and begun to reach for them...
"There's no choice, Sandburg. We can't go back the way we came in, we have to go forward. But I think you're right. I think there's going to be one last, nasty surprise. We just have to be ready for it." He gave Blair's shoulder a squeeze. "We can do it, Chief. We can get through this, together."
Blair stared into his eyes, and Jim could see his resolve harden. His lover had come a long way from the near panicked grad student who had once disabled a criminal by pushing a vending machine over on him. He was tough. They'd make it. Blair nodded, and they cautiously started to make their way toward escape.
Suddenly a dim light came on over the open space. Jim covered his eyes because, with his vision dialed up, it had almost been like a flashbulb going off in his face. He heard Blair gasp, and felt him clutch at his arm, whispering, "Son of a bitch!" When the temporary white-blindness faded and he could see again, Jim silently agreed.
A man was leaning, hands behind his back, against the corner where the hall opened up, watching them with an avid, feral gaze. He was big, even bigger than Jim, though his was obviously due mainly to fat instead of muscle. Somehow that didn't make him any less menacing. He was wearing a pair of overalls, no shirt, and his hairy skin was almost luminously pale. The denim was splotched heavily with dark stains that Jim did not want to think about. The man smiled at them. No upper teeth.
"Oh, man, Jim, we gotta go past that?"
"No other way, Darwin. He's not making any moves. Maybe we won't have any trouble."
Blair looked at Jim incredulously. "Are you kidding me?"
"We can always hope. I'll go first, you stay close behind me. If anything happens, don't wait for me: run."
They advanced slowly. Still the man didn't move. As they reached the open space, Jim kept turning to stay facing him, maneuvering to keep himself between Blair and the man, positioning them so that Blair had a clear shot at the door.
The man straightened up from the wall. "We don't want any trouble. We just want out of here." Jim said quietly. The man smiled, pulled his hands from behind his back, and made a sharp, jerking motion with one hand.
There was a coughing, roar, deafening in the narrow confines of the hall. Jim glimpsed the logo BLACK & DECKER. Some part of his brain registered the fact that it wasn't a very big power tool. But then again, how big did a chainsaw have to be?
Jim whirled and ran. Blair had obeyed him, and was flying ahead. God, it's like that endless hallway at Disneyworld: the fucking thing seems to be stretching! He could hear the thud of heavy, steel-toed boots behind him. Luckily the maniac was too big to manage much more than a lumber, and it looked like they had a chance.
Jim was right behind Blair as he hit the door. Thankfully, it wasn't locked. Blair slammed on the the push bar, throwing his weight against it, and it burst open, spilling them both out into the hot, humid night. The truck was parked only a few yards away, and they didn't stop till they ran into it, both of them thunking against the warm metal side. They just hung there for a moment, clutching the truck and gasping for breath. Then a sepulchral voice intoned, "Gentlemen."
They turned to see a tall, cadaverous figure approaching them from the hulking building they had
just escaped. His face was dead white, his glittering eyes sunken in dark sockets. His mouth was a bloody gash, and his slashed T-shirt was stained with great crimson gouts. He regarded them intently, his smile showing fangs, and spoke again.
"Y'all all right?"
Blair recovered first. "Yeah, man. But that last bit almost necessitated a change of underwear."
The ghoul chuckled. "Yeah, it always causes a stampede when Wendell fires that thing up. Don't
nobody come out of there at a walk."
"Wendell?" Jim asked.
"Yeah, Professor Wendell Hargroves. He's my Humanities professor at Lamar. Cool, ain't he? It's mostly the drama students manning the place, but he wanted to get in, and when we saw him with three days of stubble and his upper plate out, we couldn't say no. Did y'all have a good time?"
Jim grinned. "That was the most bang for my buck I've ever gotten out of ten dollars."
"Glad to hear it. Y'all come on back again, if you want. We're doing so good that we'll probably be open a weekend or two past Halloween." The young man waved and turned to amble back to the entrance. There was a line of people. They each paid a witch at the bottom of an outside flight of stairs before making their way up and going inside. The sign, which they climbed past, on the side of the building, said HAUNTED HOTEL in large, drippy red letters.
Blair looked at Jim. "We need something like this in Cascade."
Jim shook his head as he unlocked the truck. "Imagine the lawsuits for heart attacks."
"You didn't look, man. They had a sign at the door. No one with weak hearts, no pregnant women." He climbed in as Jim went around to the driver's side. "Of course, considering how narrow some of those halls were, especially that one where the floor was in those steep, slanted sections, I don't think anyone past the seventh month could get through anyway."
"Yeah. It looked like ol' Wendell would have gotten stuck like a cork in a bottleneck. Never mind the horror scenes: a claustrophobe would have hysterics just walking through." He put the key in the ignition. "Damn, it's only seven. What now?"
"Well, we have to go back to Houston for the hotel anyway, right?"
"Right." Jim started the truck and pulled out into the street. "You want to go club hopping?"
Blair shook his head. "Astroworld."
Jim shot an amused glance at him. "A haunted house, now an amusement park. Entering your second childhood early, Chief?" Blair stuck his tongue out at him, and Jim laughed. "Isn't it kind of late? We have all day tomorrow, since they cancelled the lecture on recognizing regional gang identifiers."
"It's just as well: the information was probably outdated two days after they collected it, and yeah, we're going tomorrow, too. You need at least a full day to do a place that big justice. But they'll be open to midnight, and I want to go tonight because of this."
He held out a leaflet. Jim shot it a brief glance, not daring to take his attention off the road for too long. He did catch the large print at the top, though. "Fright Nights?"
Blair nodded. "They encourage the guests to come in costume, and there are haunted houses and music. They're affiliated with Looneytunes: you know, with employees in costume?" He grinned. "Can you imagine a big Dracula Bugs Bunny?"
Jim laughed. "Buck fangs, huh? Guess I can't deny you that. Okay," he reached toward the radio, "but I get to listen to an oldies station on the way." Blair rolled his eyes, groaning pointedly, but in a moment he was singing along with 'Help Me, Rhonda'.
At the gate they paid for parking, and located a slot near the ramp leading up to the overpass. As they joined the straggle of people strolling across the walkway toward the park, Blair remarked, "I hear they used to have shuttles running across, but I guess they saved a lot of money by doing away with them." He smiled as a tiny ballerina, squealing excitedly, ran past him, pursued by an equally tiny clown. "Well, it looks like most of the visitors have energy to spare."
At the gate Jim muttered under his breath as he paid for the tickets. Blair, looking beyond the barrier at the bright lights and thickening crowd of revelers said, "Quit bitchin', man. I'll spring for a giant Slurpee, your choice of game, and a funky souvenir."
"Judging from the prices most of these places have, that should be a fair exchange." They passed through the metal detector, and Jim sighed, "I bet Walt didn't have to do this when he opened Disneyland."
"Can you remember that?" Blair asked curiously as they started along the brick pavement into the quaint Main Street area.
"Don't start, Darwin."
Jim hadn't known that it was possible for so many variations of rollercoasters to exist in one area. He lost track after Batman Escapes, the Sidewinder, and the Texas Twister. "Jesus, Chief, can't we ride something just a little more sedate? Maybe the train, or the carousel?"
"I was thinking about one of the water rides next. Maybe the Bamboo Shoot?"
"Blair, it's the middle of October, and we'll be drenched!" Jim argued.
"Uh, Jim?" Blair waved at a passing couple. The man wore a tank top and cut-offs. The woman was wearing shorts and a bathing suit top. "Hello? This is Texas, and it's, like, about eighty-five. Even I'm not cold, and you know how I am."
"But if we get wet we'll have to walk around like that till we can get back to the hotel and..."
"You'll dry." Blair watched the couple join the line for Batman Escapes. "Say, you think her top is going to survive that? I mean, they whip through that upside down loop, and she's kinda well endowed."
"It's an interesting thought, but I'm going to sit down for a minute. I saw benches back in that
medieval section."
"Okay, old man. You go have a seat and I'll get you your Slurpee. What flavor?"
"Do you need to ask?"
"Cherry it is."
Author's Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Mary, my beta, and Patt and elegy for my illustrations. Special thanks to Shymoon for the beautiful cover. Hey, I'd spend money on a book with a cover like that! Also many thanks to the whole My Mongoose crew for pulling me into this (see the bruises where they twisted my arm?). I'll be forever grateful.