Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(139)

Smithback held his breath, readied himself. Then he ducked inside.





66





Just inside the breach, they paused. The heavy mist was pouring out of the gap like water from a broken dam, filling the tunnel and the subway station beyond; within the tomb itself, it was already subsiding below eye level, allowing them to see the upper portions of the tomb. Smithback immediately recognized it, from Nora’s descriptions, as the burial chamber. Strobe lights of extraordinary, even painful intensity were flashing from every corner, and an unholy rumble filled the tomb, overlaid by a throbbing, nerve-shredding, high-pitched shriek.

“What the hell is going on?” D’Agosta asked behind him.

Pendergast moved forward without answering, waving away the swirling tendrils of fog. As they approached the huge stone sarcophagus in the center of the chamber, the agent paused, looked around at the ceiling, took aim, and fired: a fixture in the corner exploded in a flash of sparks and streamers of glass. He rotated his stance, fired again, and then again, until all the strobes were dead—although flashing could still be seen coming through the doorway to the next room of the tomb, and the hideous sounds continued.

They moved forward again. Smithback felt a sudden lurch in his gut: as the fog cleared, he could see bodies on the ground, moving feebly. The floor was slick with blood.

“Oh, no.” Smithback looked around wildly. “Nora!”

But it was impossible to hear anything over the maddening wall of noise that seemed to penetrate his very bones. He took a few more steps, frantically waving away the mist. Another explosion from Pendergast’s gun, followed by the hollow screech of feedback and an electric arc as an audio speaker crashed to the floor. Still, the sound throbbed on, unabated. Smithback grabbed some loose wires, yanked.

A plainclothes policeman approached them, staggering as if half drunk. His face was scratched and bleeding, and his shirt was torn and hanging in strips. His shield flapped on his belt as he moved, and his service piece dangled from one hand like a forgotten appendage.

Hayward frowned in surprise. “Rogerson?” she asked.

The cop’s eyes swiveled toward her briefly, then swiveled away. After a second, he turned his back on them and began staggering off. Hayward reached over and plucked the gun from the man’s unresisting hand.

“What the hell happened here?” D’Agosta cried, looking around at the scattering of torn clothes, shoes, blood, and injured guests.

“There’s no time to explain,” Pendergast said. “Captain Hayward, you and Lieutenant D’Agosta head up to the front of the tomb. You will find most of the guests up there, clustered at the entrance. Lead them back here and out through the gap in the wall. But be careful: many of them have undoubtedly become unhinged as a result of this sound-and-light show. They may be violent. Take care not to cause a stampede.” He turned to Smithback. “We must find that generator.”

“The hell with that. I’m finding Nora.”

“You won’t be able to find anyone until we stop this infernal show.”

Smithback stopped. “But—”

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

Smithback hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

Pendergast slipped a second flashlight out of his pocket and handed it to him, and they moved forward into the fog, side by side. It was a horrifying scene of carnage—wounded were sprawled across the marble floor, groaning, and more than one body lay motionless in a grotesque, unnatural position… apparently trampled to death. The floor was littered with shards of pottery. Smithback swallowed and tried to control his wildly beating heart.

Pendergast shone his light across the ceiling, the beam finally coming to rest on a long stone molding. He aimed his gun, fired, and blew off a corner of the molding, exposing a power cable that smoked and sparked.

“They would not have been allowed to bury the cables in the walls of the tomb,” he explained. “We need to search for more false moldings.”

Slowly, he traced his light along the molding, which had been plastered, textured, and painted to look like stone. It ran to a corner, where it was joined by a second molding, and from there a larger molding headed through the doorway to the adjoining room.

They picked their way over several bodies piled before the door and entered the next chamber of the tomb. Smithback winced at the blinding strobes, which Pendergast dispatched with four well-placed shots.

As the last shot reverberated through the gloom, a figure emerged from the dissipating fog, shambling, picking up and dropping its feet as if shackled with heavy weights. The mouth moved as if in violent speech, but Smithback could hear nothing over the thundering sound.