Phantoms

water.
    “Velazquez! Peake! Report in!”
    “Animals,” Billy told the general. “Dogs, cats, raccoons, all kinds of things. A river of ‘em.”
    “Sir, they’re running down the Skyline tunnel, just beyond the mouth of the pipe,” Ron Peake said.
    “Underground,” Billy said, baffled. “It’s crazy.”
    “Retreat, goddamnit!” Copperfield said urgently. “Get out of there now. Now! ”
    Billy remembered the general’s warning, issued just before they had descended through the manhole: If anything moves down there… even if it’s just a mouse, get your asses out of there fast .
    Initially, the subterranean parade of animals had been startling but not particularly frightening. Now, the bizarre procession was suddenly eerie, even threatening.
    And now there were snakes among the animals. Scores of them. Long blacksnakes, slithering fast, with their heads raised a foot or two above the floor of the storm drain. And there were rattlers, their flat and evil heads held lower than those of the longer blacksnakes, but moving just as fast and just as sinuously, swarming with mysterious purpose toward a dark and equally mysterious destination.
    Although the snakes paid no more attention to Velazquez and Peake than the dogs and cats did, their slithering arrival was enough to snap Billy out of his trance. He hated snakes. He turned back the way he had come, prodded Peake. “Go. Go on. Get out of here. Run!”
    Something shrieked-screamed-roared.
    Billy’s heart pounded with jackhammer ferocity.
    The sound came from the Skyline drain, from back there on the road to Hell. Billy didn’t dare look back.
    It was neither a human scream nor like any animal sound, yet it was unquestionably the cry of a living thing. There was no mistaking the raw emotions of that alien, blood-freezing bleat. It wasn’t a scream of fear or pain. It was a blast of rage, hatred, and feverish blood-hunger.
    Fortunately, that malevolent roar didn’t come from nearby, but from farther up the mountain, toward the uppermost end of the Skyline conduit. The beast—whatever in God’s name it was—was at least not already upon them. But it was coming fast.
    Ron Peake hurried back toward the ladder, and Billy followed. Encumbered by their bulky decontamination suits, slowed by the curved floor of the pipe, they ran in a lurching shuffle. Although they hadn’t far to go, their progress was maddeningly slow.
    The thing in the tunnel cried out again.
    Closer.
    It was a whine and a snarl and a howl and a roar and a petulant squeal all tangled together, a barbed-wire sound that punctured Billy’s ears and raked cold metal spikes across his heart.
    Closer.
    If Billy Velazquez had been a God-fearing Nazarene or a Bible-thumping, fire-and-brimstone, fundamentalist Christian, he would have known what beast might make such a cry. If he had been taught that the Dark One and His wicked minions stalked the earth in fleshy forms, seeking unwary souls to devour, he would have identified this beast at once. He would have said, “It’s Satan.” The roar echoing through the concrete tunnels was truly that terrible.
    And closer.
    Getting closer.
    Coming fast.
    But Billy was a Catholic. Modern Catholicism tended to downplay the sulphurous-pits-of-Hell stories in favor of emphasizing God’s great mercy and infinite compassion. Extremist Protestant fundamentalists saw the hand of the Devil in everything from television programming to the novels of Judy Blume to the invention of the push-up bra. But Catholicism struck a quieter, more light-hearted note than that. The Church of Rome now gave the world such things as singing nuns, Wednesday Night Bingo, and priests like Andrew Greeley. Therefore, Billy Velazquez, raised a Catholic, did not immediately associate supernatural Satanic forces with the chilling cry of this unknown beast—not even though he so vividly remembered that old road-to-Hell comic book story. Billy just knew that the bellowing creature approaching through the bowels of the earth was a bad thing . A very bad thing.
    And it was getting closer. Much closer.
    Ron Peake reached the ladder, started up, dropped his flashlight, didn’t bother to return for it.
    Peake was too slow, and Billy shouted at him: “Move your ass!”
    The scream of the unknown beast had become an eerie ululation that filled the subterranean storm drains as completely as floodwater. Billy couldn’t even hear himself shouting.
    Peake was halfway up the ladder.
    There