Astronomy(63)

“They’re all right,” he said. “We have to go get the Navy.”

Susan held back one more moment. The dead were already losing interest in the vans. They were noticing her.

“Okay,” she said, “I believe you.” They took off at a dead run across the amphitheater. The roar of the dead rose behind them. They made their way up the cliffs. Their rock ledge was lit by a couple hundred web designs, glowing under the influence of Azathoth.

They paused at the perimeter of a million overlapping lines. Which ones returned them to Kiel? Which ones took them to the burning landscape outside?

Charley pointed to a set of webs off in the corner. There must have been a hundred painted over the top of each other. All were identical to the one he had seen in the warehouses of Kiel.

“That’s our way back,” he said.

“You remember the spell? Good, I’ll wait for you to go through; make sure you’ve got it right.”

Charley paused. “What are you doing?” He looked in her eyes. “Where are you going?” She really was a lousy liar.

“I can’t leave three hundred people like this,” she said. “I can’t walk out again.” She shoved him forward. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Charley looked at her, Right you’ll be right behind me. He started to argue. A scraping sound at the top of the stair turned them both around.

A voice from the gloom said, “It breaks my heart to see you like this.” Red eyes narrowed at her in a slanting smile of hunger. “You would have been so delicious.”

More eyes appeared behind his. Susan and Charley stepped close to cover each other’s back. Susan wasn’t sure what sort of hand-to-hand combat she could use against a seven-foot-tall, four-hundred-pound opponent. Just the smell of them was unbearable.

She picked out the littlest one—little, meaning six feet instead of seven feet tall. She would kick him over the edge of the cliff and then it would be three against two. And then, who could say? She and Charley might get lucky. It could happen, sure.

She went into her wind-up, looked over her shoulder, picturing her foot connecting to the little one’s snout in a neat, nasty arc. But something was happening. The phalanx of monsters was stepping aside, like a chorus line in a Busby Berkeley musical.

And here was Krzysztof Malmagden, striding out before them with all the quiet probity of Ruby Keeler. He looked astounded and dismayed. “Why are you two still here?” he demanded. “You must leave the island at once. Everyone left alive on this island will die if you remain here.”

He sent his monsters back down the stairs to placate the throng of dead on the next landing.

Susan came back around, feeling all trembly in the knees and breathless. How many times had she almost died in the last twenty-four hours? Whatever novelty the experience had held for her was long since gone. “Call it my Berlin disease,” she said. “I have a hard time leaving anyone behind these days.”

“There is a bunker in the lowest sub-levels of this island. It was designed for the storage of certain artworks of mostly historical value.”

Susan nodded; she’d heard it described to her this very evening.

“It is hermetically sealed, perfectly temperature controlled. Herr Kriene was planning to ride out the coming of Azathoth down there, but, as you see—”

Malmagden extended his hand toward a red slick in the center of the floor below—“a change of plans for Herr Kriene. My fellows and I shall park the vans down there and wait upon your Navy to rescue the people within.”

Charley tugged at her hand. “Come on,” he said. That was good enough for him.

“What about Azathoth?” she said. Azathoth, she knew, was going to roll over this place like a lawnmower over a dog turd.

“Azathoth has missed the souls It was promised. As you must have gathered from my histrionic associate, Azathoth’s fury will be spent on this island. The wake of Its majestic bulk is formed of energetic plasmas and atomic particles accelerated to relativistic speeds. That wake is already making its way down the fracture zone as we speak. I give it fifteen hours, maximum, before the first wave front arrives overhead. Whatever deserving souls remain on this island have to be gone by then. Sixteen hours hence, Totenburgen Island, the Vergeltungswerke #16 Plant—all will be no more than a slick of ocean between Gotland Island and the Swedish coast.”

Charley was tugging at her hand. “Come on, Red. You were in the Navy. Fifteen hours is not a lot of time to get those boys moving.”

But Susan could not leave without knowing one more thing.