Clickers III Read online

  “You calling me a whore? Is that all I am to you?”

  Tony suppressed his initial response—a feat he wouldn’t have been able to manage in his old life, and smiled gently. “Of course not, baby. I care about you, and I feel bad that I can’t go out tonight. I just wanted to make it better. That’s all.”

  Her expression softened again. She finished getting dressed. Tony did the same. Then he ushered her out of the house with a promise to call her soon. When she was gone, he shut the door and sighed.

  “About fucking time. I thought she’d never leave. God-damned whore.”

  Tony got undressed again and took a shower. When he was finished, he put on a fresh pair of silk boxers and his bathrobe. Then he sat down at the dining room table and turned on his laptop. In truth, he didn’t have to work. The way the market was right now, the best thing he could do was to do nothing—except wait, and watch for good deals on fire sale stocks. He’d lied to the girl to get rid of her. Instead of working, he had other plans.

  While the laptop warmed up, Tony poured himself four fingers of Woodford Reserve bourbon and selected a Partagas Lusitanias from his cured Spanish cedar humidor. After cutting off the tip, he lit the cigar, took a sip of whiskey, and then sat down at the dining room table and clicked on the laptop’s picture folder. He didn’t have many photos from the past—guys like him weren’t exactly the type to pose for pictures. But he cherished the few he did have. After puffing the cigar to get it going, and taking another sip of whiskey, he scrolled through the pictures, pausing momentarily to look at some photos of Rick Sycheck, Jennifer Wasco, and some other survivors he’d battled alongside during the Clicker siege. The pictures weren’t his. He’d found them on various websites and saved them to his hard drive.

  Tony had read one of Rick’s novels shortly after assuming his new identity, but he wasn’t much for horror fiction, and hadn’t really enjoyed the book. Tony’s reading tastes leaned more toward Elmore Leonard, Ed Gorman, Duane Swierczynski and Ed McBain. He idly wondered where Jennifer was now. She’d been a piece of ass. Not normally his type, but the girl had guts. He’d liked that. Too bad he wasn’t allowed to stay in touch.

  He scrolled through the pictures until he found the one he was looking for. In it, he and Vince were sitting along the bar at the Odessa, a strip club back in York. The joint had been run by the Russians, but the picture had been taken during peacetime, when he and Vince had often frequented it. In the photograph, they had their arms around each other, smiling. Tony held a cigarette. Vince held a shot of mescal. It was the only picture of Vince that he still owned. The few others had been left behind, scattered among the ashes of his old life.

  “Happy Birthday, you fat fuck. Wish you were here.”

  Eyes watering, Tony drained his glass, belched, and then got up to pour another. Before he could, however, there was a knock at the door. He paused, one hand reaching for the bottle of Woodford Reserve. Cigar smoke curled in the air. Could it be the girl—whatever her fucking name was? No, he’d heard her drive away. If she’d returned, he would have heard her car pull up.

  The knock came again, more insistent this time. It seemed to almost hang in the air.

  Tony climbed up on top of the stove, reached above the kitchen cabinets, and pulled down his Taurus CIA .357 snub nose. One of the conditions of his deal with the government was that he wasn’t allowed to own any weapons, but he figured what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Normally, he’d have kept it somewhere he could get to it easily, but it was better to make it hard for his handlers to find it. He knew deep down inside that he didn’t need the gun, but old habits died hard. The person at the door wasn’t a hitman or assassin. It was probably just a neighbor, or a pizza delivery guy with the wrong address. Still, better safe than sorry. He tucked the gun into the deep pocket of his robe and went to the door. As he was unchaining it, a third knock sounded.

  “Hold the fuck on,” Tony shouted.

  He undid the deadbolt and slowly opened the door.

  The two men and one woman that stood there weren’t neighbors or lost pizza delivery people.

  And they had guns of their own.

  Big guns.

  Bigger than his. He wondered if they knew how to use them, and guessed that they probably did.

  The first man spoke. “Tony Genova.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Sorry.” Tony casually slid his hand into his pocket. His heart rate sped up. “You got the wrong place. My name’s Larry DiMazzio.”

  “No,” said the second man. “Your real name is Tony Genova.”

  “Real names are important,” the woman said. “They give you power.”

  “Listen, you got the wrong guy. Now fuck off. Whatever you’re selling, I ain’t interested.”

  Tony tried to shut the door, but the first man reached out and caught it with his hand. Tony grunted. Suddenly, moving the door was like pushing a boulder. The guy was a few inches taller than Tony, and of medium build, and didn’t look that strong.

  “Motherfucker…”

  Forgetting about the door, Tony’s fingers encircled the pistol. He tried to withdraw it from his robe, but before he could, the second man reached out and touched him on the neck.

  “Sleep.”

  “Fuck,” Tony whispered.

  Then his legs gave out and the room went black.

  He slept, just as the man had told him to do.

  The researchers died quickly and messily. Most of them had run out onto the beach, attracted by the initial commotion like insects to a light bulb. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. The massacre had begun in earnest.

  The initial force had already moved inland, following along in the wake of the two-story behemoths. Now, hundreds of Clickers rushed ashore, driven forward by the Dark Ones. They streamed from the ocean on their giant, segmented legs, enraged and hungry. Dark Ones sat astride some of the more domesticated creatures. Other Clickers were totally wild, lashing out at anything that moved. The beach descended in pandemonium. People fled, crashing into each other and falling to the sand, or stampeding over one another in an effort to escape. A professor from Princeton died of a broken neck and an anthropologist from London suffered a heart attack as their peers trampled them. They were the lucky ones. The others who fell barely had time to scream as the horde swept over them. Claws and tails lashed out, severing appendages and impaling bodies. The air was filled with shrieks and screams and tearing sounds—and the noise of the Clickers’ claws clacking together.

  CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!

  A maintenance worker grabbed the arm of a friend and engaged in a ghoulish tug-of-war with a massive Clicker. The game ended only when the creature snipped his friend in half. The worker toppled backward as two more Clickers lurched toward him. He scrambled across the sand on his hands and knees, gasping a prayer to a God he’d never believed in until now, and then leapt to his feet. As he turned to run, a segmented tail whipped forward. The impact of the stinger jabbing him in the chest felt like being shot. The loathsome beast raised its tail, lifting the hapless victim off the ground. He hung in the air, thrashing and kicking, gore gushing from his open mouth, as the monster pumped venom into his body. Within seconds, his skin began to bubble and hiss. Then it sloughed off his frame and splattered onto the sand. Other Clickers rushed forward and began to shovel the sizzling, soupy mess into their beak-like mouths.

  Myrna and Julia, two women from the research center’s food services division, ran toward an outcropping of rocks jutting up from the sand. They tried to clamber up the slick surfaces but kept sliding back down. A group of Clickers pursued them, waving their claws in the air. The helpless women backed up against the stones and wept. One creature pushed Myrna against the boulder and then snapped her head off with one scarlet claw. Blood jetted from the stump of her neck and the monster bathed in it, feeding greedily. Julia screamed in horror as her friend’s severed head rolled at her feet, staring up at her with eyes st
ill open. Julia had always heard that a decapitated head was still conscious for a few moments after death. It could still see and register what was happening. Julia wondered if Myrna’s last impression would be of this—and then a barbed stinger rammed forward, spearing her in the abdomen.

  Perrin Tempel, an expert in linguistics from the Univer-sity of Minnesota, found himself unable to move as a Clicker advanced toward him. He wanted to, but fear had rooted him to the spot. He couldn’t run, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even blink as the monster advanced. All he could do was watch. During their last invasion, he’d seen the creatures only on television and the web. Up close, they were very different. For a moment, he was struck by the bizarre beauty of the beast. The Clicker’s serrated pincers were tinted with a delicate crisscross pattern of red and magenta, deepening to a thick shade of black at the tips. As it drew closer, Perrin’s bladder voided. The front of his pants grew wet. The Clicker made a warbling sort of hiss and darted forward. Deciding not to look at its claws or stinger, Perrin focused on the thing’s black, stalked eyes. His last thought was that they reminded him of ball bearings. Then the Clicker seized him. It briefly waved Perrin back and forth in the air like a trophy before cutting him in half. The linguist’s innards spilled out all over the swaying grass. His blood arced through the air, splattering against the thing’s hard shell. Ignoring the other fleeing humans, the Clicker paused in its murderous frenzy to slurp up the pile of Perrin’s spilled intestines and other organs. Half of Perrin’s lifeless body still dangled from its claw.

  A marine biologist named Chris Wick found a discarded shovel and used it to fend off a pursuing Clicker. The monster grasped it, snapping the makeshift weapon in half. Then it did the same to him. Its

  claws made a terrible clicking noise, like two steel plates being banged together. Wick shrieked as he watched the creature begin to feed on his lower half. Then a Dark One speared him through the heart.

  Melissa Levitz thought she’d escaped the carnage as she ducked into a small beach hut. When she heard a rustling sound behind her and felt something shove hard against her back, Melissa was unsure what had happened at first. Then she glanced down and noticed the stinger jutting from between her breasts. She drew breath to scream, but her cries turned into a choked gobbling as the stinger was drawn back inside of her. She felt it throbbing as venom was pumped into her body. Seconds later, her skin began to bubble and hiss as if she were being cooked from the inside. Blisters formed on her body. Melissa’s eyes grew wide as the blisters swelled, and then burst, oozing pink fluids. Melissa squirmed and thrashed, sliding down the tail and trailing viscera. She opened her mouth to scream and vomited blood and her own dissolving internal organs instead. The Clicker yanked its tail free and Melissa slid to the floor. The hole in her mid-section bubbled and steamed. Parts of her insides still clung to the stinger.

  One group of researchers decided that their best chance of escape was to actually flee into the ocean and run along the beach. The five of them waited for a break in the carnage and then did just that. As they plunged into the surf, another group of Dark Ones came ashore astride a pack of Clickers. The hapless humans never stood a chance. The Dark Ones cut the first three down with their tridents and swords. A Clicker attacked the fourth scientist, snipping away her arms and legs as if she were a paper doll. The foaming spray turned crimson. The fifth scientist scampered backward, heading ashore again. He tripped, sank beneath the waves, and then surfaced, sputtering and coughing as his attackers loomed over him. A Clicker’s stinger darted forth, stabbing him in the chest. His eyes rolled back into his head, showing only white. Seconds later a Dark One who sat astride the beast, thrust a three-pronged trident into his face and then yanked it back out, taking the man’s eyes with it. The victim jittered, convulsing on the sand. The Clicker’s tail pulsed, pumping venom through the appendage. The Dark One stabbed the corpse again, laughing with glee. Nearby, another Clicker consumed a still-living human. The helpless woman shrieked and wailed as the creature’s claws tore at her flesh, slicing skin and muscle away with an almost delicate precision, and shoveling the meat into its beaked mouth.

  Many of the fleeing scientists took shelter in the jungle, hoping that the thick vegetation would hide them from the murderous creatures—and it did, until several black Clickers waddled to the edge of the jungle and began to spray the trees and undergrowth with venom. The noxious fluid splattered the humans as well. Wood and flesh bubbled and melted.

  The Dark Ones waded ashore behind the rampaging Clickers, stepping around the bubbling piles of flesh that had once been human bodies. Armed with tridents, nets fashioned from a peculiar, flexible metal, and weapons salvaged from various shipwrecks, the lizard-men joined the fray, slaughtering any researchers unlucky enough to have escaped the Clickers unscathed.

  Clouds passed over the moon, plunging the beach into merciful darkness.

  The screams continued.

  Clark Arroyo set the rake inside the condominium’s utility shed and cast a backward glance at Tony Genova’s unit. He had a clear view of the front door, but the dense shrubs that he’d maintained over the past few days provided good cover from his vantage point. There was no way he could be seen by the three government agents who’d just showed up—not under the cover of darkness.

  Despite the weeks of preparation for this day, he hadn’t anticipated a visit from Tony’s FBI handlers, especially so soon. Clark had been keeping track of them; they usually checked in on Tony in person once a month, and every week by phone or email. The last time they’d visited Tony in person was a week-and-half ago.

  So why were they visiting him again so soon?

  Clark watched out of the corner of his eye as one of the agents touched the side of Tony’s neck and the former crime-figure slumped to the floor. Half of him lay inside the apartment. The other half lay on the stoop.

  The agents moved quickly, but Clark was quicker. He dipped behind the utility shed, counted to five, then risked a peek through the vegetation.

  Whoever these guys were, they were good. They’d moved Tony inside and shut the front door.

  Clark took a breath and wondered what his next move should be. The fact that the agents had knocked Tony out on his ass only meant one thing—they weren’t his usual handlers, which meant they represented something else. Something more sinister. Someone with an old score to settle? Possibly, but Clark doubted it. Clark had been trained on how to read people. In his previous line of work, Presidents and other important figures had lived and died on how well Clark and his fellow agents could scan a crowd and figure people out. You couldn’t protect someone unless you’d assessed the potential threats; in Clark’s case, he could glance at someone and guess within thirty seconds what they did for a living, know approximately how much they made per year, their marital status, and most importantly, whether they represented a threat or not. The only other individuals that Clark had ever met who had this innate ability were salespeople.

  Genova’s assailants were unmarried. None of them wore wedding bands, nor was there a white circle on the skin of their fingers denoting where a ring had been. They were neat and well groomed. Dressed casually, but not sloppy. They had an air of self-assuredness. More importantly, their demeanor and body-language denoted them as professionals. Professional what, was the question.

  Not criminals. They didn’t fit the type, not even for the ailing and aging Mafia wiseguys who Tony Genova had once worked for. And not FBI. And probably not any of the government’s other alphabet soup agencies, either. So who were they? Black Lodge? When he’d worked as a Secret Service Agent, Clark had heard rumors about such an organization. Back then he’d chalked what he’d heard up to nothing more than conspiracy theories and the paranoid ravings of internet madmen who couldn’t cope with their everyday reality. But since the Clickers and Dark Ones invasion four years ago, which had sent Clark Arroyo’s life into an unending spiral of turmoil, he’d come to the conclusion that perhaps some of what he’d heard
wasn’t all conspiracy theory bullshit.

  The Clickers had been real. So had the Dark Ones. And if they were real, why not Black Lodge?

  And if that was the case?

  Clark felt a pit of fear settle over him as he closed the door to the utility shed. He’d arrived at the condominium complex wearing the green coveralls worn by the staff groundskeepers. The Mexican groundskeeper he’d gotten them from had been only too happy to accept Clark’s thousand bucks in cash in exchange for the uniform, his job for the next few days, and his silence. Clark had observed the groundskeeper for a full week before making his proposition, so he knew the man worked solo all day. It had provided the perfect opportunity for casing Tony Genova’s unit and plotting his next move.

  Only now, he didn’t know what his next move was going to be.

  Clark leaned against the closed utility shed door, his mind racing. He was in close enough proximity that he would hear when the shadowy figures who’d entered Tony’s unit left. He’d come too far now to abort his mission. He had to wait this out, see what kind of move they’d make, before he could decide what to do.

  His original plan had been simple. Gain entry to Tony’s unit by

  pretending to be a Mexican immigrant groundskeeper who needed access to the rear deck of the unit. Clark was one-half Mexican anyway, spoke Spanish (as well as Japanese, French, German, and Cantonese) and could easily emulate the speech and mannerism of an immigrant worker. Once he was inside he’d knock Tony unconscious, get him tied up, then wait for him to wake up. Once he was conscious, Clark would explain Tony’s options. Cooperate or Old Man Marano would get word that Tony was still alive, as well as the former hitman’s exact location. Clark figured the choice was obvious; the don might be serving time, but he had a reach outside the prison walls that would result in a very dead Tony Genova within twenty-four hours.