Lydia threw the head as hard as she could against the pa.s.swall. It cracked like heavy porcelain. Wade staggered as if drunk down the pa.s.s. "You like to keep a guy in suspense, don't you?"

"Are you all right?"

"I think so. At least I don't have to go to the bathroom anymore. What time is it?"

Lydia consulted her watch. "Eleven fifty four."

"We've got six minutes."

They ran like slapstick idiots down the pa.s.s. Wade held onto her as they extromitted down to the next level. "What did you bring that for?" he asked, noticing the UV spotter on her belt.

"In case the sisters are around."

"They're all either dead or hibernating," he informed her. "At least that's one thing we don't have to worry about."

They weren't two steps into the next servicepa.s.s when, at once, their surroundings went from dark to light. Suddenly they were standing in brilliant radiance; the labyrinth's ice cold changed to stunning heat. Myriad sensorposts glowed in shimmering black, and all around them the labyrinth hummed like high tension power lines.

Lydia checked her watch. "Eleven fifty five," she said.

"Recharge," Wade realized.

"Does that mean-"

"It means the Supremate knows we're here."

Nina McCulloch woke up alone in a hospital bed. What was she doing here? The room's only light came from the window.

She'd had a terrible dream.

Elizabeth and her two friends. The hooded girl in the black cloak. And Jervis Phillips, dead but walking.

It wasn't a dream, she realized. It was the devil.

But G.o.d had saved her from that, hadn't He?

Some police had brought her to the hospital. Nina prayed thanks to G.o.d. She wondered, though, if the devil had been vanquished. Show me a sign, Lord, she prayed.

The room filled with light.

It came from the window. Nina got up to look. At first she thought it must be a fire of some kind, it was miles distant. Forest fire? she thought. Plane crash?

She saw a gaseous yellow aura rising in the sky. It seemed to be coming from past the campus, the forest near the agro site. It wasn't a fire, though. It was an emanation.

No, Nina thought. A sign!

The Supremate's pre recharge sleep was over. Fleeing the labyrinth's hot and glowing bowels made Wade think of Jonah and the whale. He and Lydia came out on the last level. The fully energized sign beamed at the end of the pa.s.s: POINTACCESSMAIN#1.

They stopped in their tracks. A hum vibrated in their heads. When they turned around, they saw six sisters emerge from the extromitter behind them.

"Pardon me while I s.h.i.t my pants," Wade muttered. These sisters were the biggest he'd seen. They were beautiful in their immense, alien hybridized perfection. The last one to emerge stood over eight feet tall.

"I'm going to burn these b.i.t.c.hes down," Lydia said. She pushed Wade toward the last extromitter. Cloaked, the sisters advanced, showing fang crammed grins. They moved slowly at first, then began to run so fast they seemed aflight. Lydia set the UV spotter on the floor.

"Turn it on!" Wade shouted.

But Lydia was waiting for them to get close. When the first two were only yards away, she flicked the spotter on. Shrieks whistled. The sisters leading the pack began to smolder, then their white faces exploded. Wade and Lydia were splattered.

"Run!" Lydia yelled. They tore for the extromitter. Lydia was plugging in her key. Wade glanced back. Fangs glittered from flashes of wailing faces. Smoke poured out of frantic black cloaks as the phalanx of sisters hulled into the field of ultraviolet light. Flesh sizzled amid the onslaught of shrieks. Spheric eyes ruptured, torrents of fresh, black blood fell like rain as crisped hands reached out from the billow of oily smoke. Then the rank of corpses fell atop the spotter and died. But the spotter was under them, its deadly invisible light buried by their sizzling bodies.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Wade muttered.

The last and largest sister remained. Spots of flesh cooked on her face, yet she had survived. Her fangs protracted, and she lunged over the corpses.

Lydia grabbed Wade's hand and pulled him through the humming slit.

On the other side, Wade again caught only glimpses of things, unstable fragments: the rocking backdrop of Besser's office, paneled walls, furniture, the carpeted floor, and Lydia tugging on him trying to drag him through. The desk clock read 11:59. Wade had oozed through the extromitter by everything but his right ankle. Lydia pulled and pulled but he wasn't moving- The sister's hand had his ankle, pulling him back. Lydia yanked from one side while the sister yanked from the other. This was a tug of war, and Wade was the rope. He was being pulled between the threshold of two worlds.

Lydia gave a final heave, and Wade's ankle came through the wall, along with the sister's arm.

The desk clock's lighted digits read 12:00.

A sound like an air raid siren whistled into the room, and a terrifying, vibrating drone. The extromission egress turned bright red, then snapped closed. Wade's release came as suddenly as a knife to a climber's rope. He was thrown into the middle of the office, tumbling into Lydia's lap.

The sister's arm had detached at the elbow and lay severed on the carpeted floor.

Wade and Lydia looked up at the wall.

The extromitter dot was gone, which could only mean that the labyrinth was gone too.

CHAPTER 43.

n.o.body ever knew what happened, except, of course, for Lydia and Wade. The newspapers did their best to speculate as to Exham College's spate of disappearances and murder. One paper blamed a clandestine drug ring. Another blamed the Dixie Mafia, while still another blamed, of all things, a satanic cult. Wade was tempted to write an article himself, about aliens abducting humans for genetic hybridization experiments, but he doubted that even the lowest of tabloids would go for anything so farfetched.

As after any great calamity, things eventually returned to normal. Dean Saltenstall's murder had been blamed on a burglar. Peerce, Porker, and Chief White had fallen in the line of duty to drug merchants. Within days, the campus had appointed a new dean, and the town counsel had elected a new chief of police.

"Hi, Dad. This is Wade!"

"I would never have guessed," came Dad's stolid reply over the phone line. "What did you do this week, son?"

Wade contemplated the full weight of the answer. I saved the world, he wished he could say. "Oh, the usual," he said instead. "Worked, studied, that sort of thing. Just another week in the life of a diligent student."

"Sounds like the usual bulls.h.i.t to me," Dad commented.

Wade lay back in bed, eyeing Lydia. She stood at the bathroom mirror brushing her teeth. Wade nearly swooned: All she wore was a pair of devil red frilled panties.

"Wade, Wade? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, Dad, I'm still here... Look, there's something I have to tell you-"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it! Not another traffic ticket!"

"No, Dad. This is good news. I'm...engaged."

"You're what?"

"Engaged. You know, as in getting married."

"I know what engaged means, Wade. Engaged to who?"

Wade smiled. "The chief of police."

"You're telling me that you're engaged to Chief White?"

"No, Dad. The new chief of police. Her name's Lydia. She's a little b.i.t.c.hy sometimes, but boy has she got a great a.s.s."

A wet washrag flew from the bathroom and slapped Wade in the face. "You're gonna love her, Dad. Guaranteed."

"You never cease to amaze me, son."

"Sure, but isn't that how it's, supposed to be?"

Wade left his father with the expected doubts. The old ballbuster would come around in time, like just about anyone's dad. Wade saw it as the first smart decision of his life. And with any luck it would be the first of many.

"So I've got a great a.s.s, huh?" Now Lydia was brushing her beautiful white blond hair. "That's the son to father consensus?"

"Great legs too. And hooters..." Wade whistled.

"You're a s.e.xist pig, but I guess I can live with it."

Wade lounged back in the pillows. Happy ever after? he wondered. Who knew? Who ever knew? But he just had a funny feeling that this was going to work.

"Sweetheart?"

Lydia glared. "Don't call me sweetheart. It's so domestic."

"Okay...honeybunch. Something just occurred to me, just now when I was on the phone with Dad."

"What?"

"We saved the world."

Lydia's expression widened in the mirror. The black bomb would've destroyed the vital tracking systems. Right now, the labyrinth was s.p.a.ce junk floating lost across the galaxy. It would never return to where it had come from.

"And I just thought of something else," Wade continued his muse. "I wonder what happened to Besser?"

On that particular night, Besser had crawled brokenly across the grove. He'd escaped the labyrinth only to find himself trapped in this thing laden mora.s.s. He choked on green fog. Horned insects drilled into his flesh; hot gourds and carca.s.ses plump with moist rot crumpled beneath his paddling hands and knees. His leg was numb now; it dragged along behind him like a ball and chain. Things like eyeless rats the size of groundhogs bit chunks out of it as he crawled farther into the grove. The leech mouthed fog snakes swam about him en ma.s.se, biting out a piece of flesh here, a collop of fat there. Even the vegetation attacked him as he crawled on. Bulbs dipped from sagging branches, spreading jaws full of crystal teeth. Grime caked vines threatened to entangle him. Some large shivering pod burst at its tip and vomited a gush of seeds and stinking black slop into his face. Oh, Mother, he thought beneath his sobs.

One of the fog snakes tore out the seat of his pants, then more-many more-converged to take bites out of his huge b.u.t.tocks. Professor Besser screamed louder than the horn on his De Ville when something unseen sunk teeth like sewing needles into one of his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. The entire grove was conspiring to consume him bit by bit. Just as he concluded that he could go no farther, his face rose out of the fogtop. He trundled forward, at once delirious with excitement. Who said there were no miracles? Besser had managed to crawl clear across the horrid grove, and he'd survived!

Praise heaven! he thought.

He looked at his watch: 11:55. Recharge.

The entire forest moaned. The fog churned like a lake in heavy rain. Through the trees, Besser could see the unearthly oblong box that was the labyrinth. From its corners, spears of yellow light lanced into the sky, and then billows of luminous yellow gas began to rise. The labyrinth was recharging its electromagnetic launch systems. Besser had to shield his eyes-light as intense as the sun flooded the grove. The fog was boiling like a cauldron of green stew. Besser crawled for cover. Five minutes later came a brilliant yellow flash, then darkness.

And silence.

He peered out. The labyrinth had pulsed off, on its way to its next world. At once the grove and its unholy inhabitants began to blacken and die.

Besser limped into the outer clearing, using a st.u.r.dy branch as a crutch. He had time now to put his life back together, but the first thing he had to do was get to a hospital.

The second thing was to find Wade St. John and kill him.

He crutched clumsily toward the logging road which led to Route 13. That's when he noticed the hole. When he bent over to take a closer look, two flabby hands reached up and grabbed onto his head.

Penelope couldn't have been more pleased. What a nice surprise to have a visitor! She pulled Besser down, down, down into her hole. She'd actually gotten to like it down here. So many days and nights of hard work-throwing out dirt and packing the walls smooth and tight-had enabled her to prepare quite an impressive little underground home. There was plenty of room for her to move around. She could lounge back, stretch, flop about-all at her leisure. What more could a boneless girl ask for? It was cozy and snug, and she was proud of it.

The appearance of her old biology professor couldn't have been better timed. s...o...b..ring, she shrieked her enthusiasm, wrapping boneless arms around his neck. She had a hard time squeezing him through-he was so fat-but her new and inspired strength eventually jerked him all the way into the earthen cavern.

Besser screamed and screamed and screamed while Penelope made blubbering giggles. Much like pulling tomatoes off a vine, she twisted his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es off and crushed them to pulp in her hands. She reasoned that Besser was to blame for the death of her first baby-he'd allowed that awful sister to eat it-so she equally reasoned that it was his obligation to give her a new baby. She cooed as she sc.r.a.ped the sperm laden pulp off her hands into her amorphous s.e.x.

Besser was still screaming, for reasons most would deem legitimate. Penelope used a broken Kirin bottle to open him up, parting shanks of flab as easily as new churned b.u.t.ter, and she cut very deep indeed. Deeper, deeper, and down, the sharp gla.s.s sliced into squirming fat to unveil the succulent organs of his great tremoring gut.

True, the sisters had removed her bones, but Penelope still had her teeth, thank G.o.d, and after all her labors down here, she had worked up a considerable appet.i.te.

THE END.