was confronted by a wall of bookshelves--a solid wall of
books that seemed to stretch away into darkness in both directions.
A wall? Hawkins thought. He must be at the edge of
the floor--at one of the long sides of the enormous rectangle.
The sound came again.
Only this time, it came from ... behind him.
Hawkins spun, raised his gun.
What the hell--? Had it turned?
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Matthew Reilly
Cautiously, he edged his way down the alleyway of
books.
The aisle closed in around him. The nearest cross
passageway branched away to his right--there was nothing
but the unbroken wall of bookshelves to his left--about
twenty feet away. It was cloaked in shadow.
Hawkins stepped forward slowly. The passageway
came fully into view.
It was different.
This wasn't a T-junction like the last one. More like an
L-shape.
Hawkins frowned, and then he realized. It was a corner
--the very corner of the floor. He hadn't realized that
he'd come this far from the murder scene at the center.
Listening.
Nothing.
He came to the L-junction and listened again. There
was no sound.
Whatever it was, it was gone now.
And then Hawkins began to think. He'd followed the
sound, the source of which had presumably been unaware of
his presence. But its last few movements had been odd.
It was as though whoever it was had lost direction and
had started circling ...
Circling, Hawkins thought.
No one would consciously go in a circle, would they,
unless they were lost or ... or unless they knew someone
was following them.
Hawkins' blood went completely cold. Whoever it was,
it wasn't just circling.
It was doubling back.
It knew he was here.
Hawkins spun to face the long aisle behind him, jamming
his back into the corner shelving.
Nothing.
"Damn it!" he whispered. He could feel beads of cold
sweat forming on his forehead. "Damn it, shit!"
Contest
He couldn't believe it. He'd walked right into a corner.
A goddamn corner! Two options--straight or left. Shit, he thought, at least among the bookshelves he'd have had room.
Now he was trapped.
And then suddenly he saw it.
Off to the left, moving slowly and carefully out into the passageway.
Hawkins' eyes widened.
"Holy shit."
It looked like nothing he had ever seen before.
Big and long, but low to the ground like an alligator, the
creature looked almost dinosaurian--with black-green pebbled skin, four powerful stubby limbs and a long, thic
counterbalancing tail.
Its head was truly odd. No eyes, and--seemingly--no mouth. The only distinguishing feature: a pair of long spindly antennae that jutted up from its forehead and
clocked rhythmically from side to side.
It was twenty feet away from Hawkins when the tip of
its tail finally came into view. The tail itself must have been
eight feet long, and it slid across the floor in long, slow arcs, creating the soft sweeping sound. Hawkins saw that the tail
tapered sharply to a point at its tip. The whole animal must
have been at least fourteen feet long.
Hawkins blinked. For an instant there, behind the tail, he thought he caught a glimpse of a man, a small man
dressed completely in white--
And then the creature's head eased slowly upward--the folds of its skin peeling back to reveal a hideous four-sided
jaw that opened with a soft, lethal hiss. Four rows of hideously
jagged, saliva-covered teeth appeared.
"Jesus Christ!" Hawkins stared at the creature.
It moved forward.
Toward him.
One of the animal's forelegs caught his attention. A green light glowed from a thick gray band strapped to the
creature's left forelimb.
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Matthew Reilly
It was close now--its jaws wide, salivating wildly, dripping
the swaying antennae on its head, clocking from side to side
like a pair of metronomes.
It was three feet away ...
Two feet ...
Hawkins tensed to run, but for some terrifying reason,
his legs wouldn't move. He tried to raise his gun, but
couldn't--it was as if every muscle in his body had gone
completely, instantly limp. He watched helplessly as, to his
horror, his gun slipped from his unresponsive hand and
dropped loudly to the floor.
The antennae kept swaying.
One foot away ...
Hawkins was sweating profusely, breathing in short,
rapid breaths. He just couldn't take his eyes off the antennae.
They seemed to move in perfect rhythm, swaying in smooth
hypnotic circles ...
He watched--completely defenseless--as the creature's
sinister-looking head came slowly up to his knee.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, like a cobra coiling
up off the ground, the creature's long pointed eight-foot tail
lifted off the floor and swung forward--over its low reptilian
body--so that now it was pointing forward, arcing over its
frame like a scorpion's stinger, the tip of the tail pointing
right at the bridge of Paul Hawkins's nose.
Hawkins saw it happen and his terror hit fever pitch. He
desperately wanted to shut his eyes, so he wouldn't see it
happen, but he couldn't even do that--
"Hey!"
The creature's head snapped left.
And in an instant, the trance was broken and Hawkins
could move again. He looked up and saw ...
... a man.
A man, standing a short way down the aisle. Hawkins
hadn't even seen him approach. Hadn't even heard him.
Hawkins took in the man's appearance. He had wet hair, and
Contest 497
was wearing jeans and sneakers and a white shirt that hung
out at the waist.
The man spoke to Hawkins.
"Come over here. Now."
Hawkins looked down warily at the big alligator like
creature at his feet. It ignored him completely, simply faced
the man in jeans, its body dead still.
If it had eyes, Hawkins thought, it was definitely glaring at him. A low rumbling noise rose threateningly from the depths of its throat.
Hawkins glanced questioningly at the man. The man just kept his eyes levelled at him.
"Come on," he said, eyes unmoving. "Just leave the gun
there and walk very slowly over to me."
Tentatively, Hawkins took a step forward.
The creature at his knee didn't move. It remained steadfastly
focused on the man in jeans.
The man pushed Hawkins behind him and slowly
stepped backward, away from the creature.
Hawkins looked down the aisle behind them and saw
two figures standing maybe forty feet away--a small one in
white, and another, equally small, who looked like ... he
squinted ... like a little girl.
"Move," Swain said, pushing Hawkins down the aisle,
his bac
k to him.
Swain kept his eyes averted, directed at the bookshelves, away from the creature's swaying antennae, watching
it only out of his peripheral vision.
The two men stepped slowly down the aisle, away from
the frozen creature.
And then suddenly it began to follow them, moving
around the corner in a darting crablike manner that belied its
size. Then it stopped.
Swain pushed Hawkins farther down the aisle. "Keep
moving. Just keep moving."
"What the--"
"Just move."
Swain was walking backward, still facing the creature.
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Matthew Reilly
Again it made a darting, scuttling movement ten feet forward,
and then stopped again, well short of Hawkins and himself
It's being cautious, he thought.
And then it charged.
"Oh, shit!
The large animal bounded down the narrow confines of
the aisle.
Swain looked frantically for somewhere to run. But he
was still ten feet away from the nearest cross-aisle into the
maze of bookshelves.
There was nowhere to go!
Swain braced himself, the ground beneath him vibrating
under the thumping weight of the fast-approaching creature. Christ, it must weigh nearly four hundred pounds.
Hawkins turned. He saw it over Swain's shoulder.
"Holy Christ ..."
Swain just stood there, feet spread wide, taking up the
whole aisle.
The creature kept coming. It wasn't stopping.
"It's not stopping!" Hawkins yelled.
"It has to!" Swain called. "It has to stop!"
The creature bounded forward, bearing down on Swain
like a runaway freight train, until abruptly, three feet short of
him, it reared on its hind legs and clasped the bookcases on
either side of it with its clawed forelimbs, bringing it to a
sudden, lunging stop.
The four-sided jaw stopped inches away from Swain's
unmoving face.
The creature hissed fiercely, challenging him. Its saliva
dripped down onto the floor in front of his shoes.
Swain averted his gaze again, stared at a nearby bookshelf, keeping his eyes off the animal's oscillating antennae.
The horrifying alligator like creature, now standing up on its
hind legs, towered over him, loomed above him like an evil
apparition.
Swain wagged a finger at the infuriated animal: "Ah-ah-ah. No touching."
Contest
And he began to walk backward again, pushing Hawkins.
Hawkins stumbled down the aisle, looking back over
his shoulder every few seconds. This time the creature didn't
follow them, at least not immediately.
They reached the little white man and the girl, and were
a good thirty feet from the creature when it began moving
toward them again.
The little man spoke: "Sequencing! She's sequencing!
The man in the loose-fitting shirt and jeans looked at
Hawkins, standing there in his well-pressed police uniform.
"We don't have time to talk right now, but my name is
Stephen Swain, and at the moment we're all in big trouble.
You ready to run?"
Hawkins answered without thinking. "Yuh-huh."
Swain looked back down the aisle at the large dinosaur like creature. Twenty feet. He picked up Holly.
"You know the way back to the main stairwell?" he
asked Hawkins.
The young cop nodded. "I think so."
"Then you lead the way. Just keep zig-zagging. We'll be
right behind you." He turned to the others. "You two ready?"
They nodded. "Okay then, let's move."
Hawkins broke into a run, the others close behind him.
With a great lunge, the creature leaped forward in pursuit.
Swain brought up the rear, carrying Holly on his hip. He
could hear the pounding of the great weight on the floor behind him.
The stairs. The stairs. Got to reach the stairs.
Left, right, left, right.
He could see the cop weaving up ahead, and then
abruptly he saw the aisle with yellow tape running down its length up ahead. The aisle that led back to the main stairwell block.
"Daddy! It's catching up!" Holly yelled from his shoulder.
He looked behind him.
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Matthew Reilly
The creature was indeed closing in on them--a giant
black-green monster galloping down the narrow aisle with
its salivating jaws bared wide.
Swain wasn't worried for himself. Selexin had been
right about that. Whatever it was, it was another contestant,
and it couldn't touch him. Not yet. Not until that number on
his watch read "7."
But if it got Holly ...
He saw the cop round the corner up ahead entering the
police-taped aisle, followed by Selexin. Swain rounded the
corner last of all, panting hard, and saw--
The door!
He saw Selexin duck inside it, and then the policeman
appeared in the doorway, his hand outstretched.
"Come on!" he was yelling.
Swain heard the creature slide around the corner behind
him.
He kept running, kept holding Holly to his chest. He
was breathing very fast now. He was sure he was running too
slowly. He could hear the creature's snorting grunts close
behind him. Any second now it would be all over him, ready
to pluck his daughter--the only family he had left--right from his very arms ...
"Come on!" Hawkins called again.
Behind him, Swain heard the creature's tail slam
against a bookcase, heard the sound of books crashing to the
floor. Then suddenly, he was at the door and he reached for
Hawkins' outstretched arms and Hawkins grabbed his hand
and hurled him and Holly inside the stairwell just as Selexin
slammed the big door shut behind them.
Selexin turned, breathless, exhilarated. "We made it--"
Bang!
The door behind him shuddered violently.
Swain lifted himself up from the floor, gasping for air.
"Come on."
They were a whole floor up the stairwell when they
heard the door to the Stack bang open with a loud bone-jarring crack!
INCOMPLETE--6
Swain frowned at the wristband. He'd missed the arrival of
the last two contestants. Now there was no knowing where
the next--and last--contestant would enter the library.
No knowing when the Presidian would begin.
The group had left the stairwell and were now hiding in an office on the Lower Ground Floor--a partially underground half-floor which on days opened via a side entrance onto 42nd Street. Like all the other offices around it, this one was partitioned by waist-high wood paneling with glass reaching the rest of the way up to the ceiling. Everyone was careful to stay low, out of sight, below
the glass.
Swain had found a directory of the library attached to
the wall of the stairwell and wrenched it free. He was looking
at it now while Selexin sat behind the desk, quietly explaining
their situation to Hawkins. Holly was sitting on the
floor nestled up to Swain, holding him tightly, sucking her
thumb. She was still a little shell-shocked by their close encounter
with the big creature
downstairs.
The directory showed a cross-section of the library. Five
floors--three above ground, two below--each a different
color. The two sub-levels below the Ground Floor were both
shaded gray and stamped with the label no public access.
The others were brightly colored:
THIRD FLOOR --MAIN READING ROOM,
EDNA BARNES SALOMON ROOM
SECOND FLOOR --ORIENTAL DIVISION
SLAVIC & BACK DIVISION
GROUND FLOOR --ASTOR HALL ST. AVE ENTRANCE
Matthew Reilly
LOWER GROUND FLOOR
COAT CHECK
LIBRARY SHOP; EXHIBIT--FORUM CONVENTION CENTER
LIBRARY OFFICES, 42ND ST. ENTRANCE
Swain remembered the enormous Reading Room up on
the top floor with its sea of desks. He tried to memorize the
rest. Small blue squares picturing a stick-man and woman
indicated toilets on every other floor. Another blue square,
with a car pictured in it, filled one half of the Lower Ground
Floor. The parking lot.
He checked his wristband again.
INCOMPLETE--6
Still 6." Good.
He looked over at Selexin and the policeman, and shook
his head in wonder.
That young cop was lucky to be alive. It had been only
blind luck that had led Swain to his rescue--an instant when
he, Holly and Selexin had been descending the main stairwell
and seen a long shadow stretch out onto the landing below
them.
They had watched from the shadows above as the creature --Selexin said its name was Reese--stepped slowly into view, accompanied by its guide. It stopped on the landing, seemed to examine the floor with its snub dinosaurlike snout, and then peered down the stairwell.
Then it had slithered quickly down the stairs.
Something had caught its attention.
Curious, they had followed it down into the Stack and
seen it weave purposefully in and out of the bookshelves for
several minutes--stalking something, leading it on. It was
only at the last moment that Swain had ventured out into the
furthermost aisle to actually see Reese's quarry--a lone policeman,
trapped in the corner.
Contest 503
He'd moved instantly--stopping only for a piece of last-minute advice from Selexin: avoid all eye contact with Reese's antennae.