Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [126]
But the top three floors were higher than the adjoining building, and a quick look out one of the windows on the highest revealed that there were no ladders or ropes allowing for descent to the other building’s roof. So they went down to the first floor that allowed direct access and began searching. The rooms were all the same, their windows broken out, their sleeping and living rooms cluttered with decaying furniture and trash, their carpeted floors waterstained and worn, and their papered walls cracked and peeling. Hawk searched them swiftly, aware that the light was continuing to fail, conscious of a quickening in the approach of darkness. He did not like this building. He did not like how it made him feel.
Finding nothing on that floor, they descended to the next. Almost immediately they discovered the makeshift door that had been knocked in the wall of the rearmost sleeping room. After a futile pause to listen for signs of life, they stepped into the adjoining building and found themselves inside a warren of rooms that had once been offices, filled with desks and filing cabinets, with shelving and books, and with machines that no longer ran. The rooms were shadowed and empty of life, and there was no sign of the Cats. They searched the entire floor without success, then went down another floor and started again.
“How many we gonna search?” Panther whispered, his voice conveying a mix of uneasiness and frustration. “This gonna take us for ever!
Hawk agreed. They began moving quickly from floor to floor, not bothering with a thorough search, but settling for a quick scan that would reveal any sign of occupancy. They got all the way down to the ninth floor before they found what they were looking for. Nine floors, nine lives, Hawk was thinking before he realized what he was looking at.
“Frickin’ hell, Bird-Man,” Panther breathed softly.
A huge section of the wall was broken out near the stairwell, and Hawk could tell at a glance that the damage was recent. It hadn’t given way on its own; it had been forced. Beyond the rubble of the wall a body lay half buried in the debris. Farther in, doorways and entries had been forcibly broken out and widened, their jambs shattered, the supporting walls ripped apart. Even in the heavy layer of shadows and thin veil of weakening light, Hawk could detect other bodies scattered about.
Everything, for as far as he could see through the damaged walls and entries, was torn to pieces.
He stepped into the room, climbed over the rubble, and bent down to the first body. He had to pull part of an old curtain off it to make certain it was one of the Cats. It was an older boy, his eyes open and staring, his face contorted in pain and horror. There was a huge swollen purplish mark on his neck with a dark center, as if he had been stung. Hawk had never seen a wound like it. He studied the body for other damage and didn’t find any. With Panther following, he moved on.
They found a dozen dead boys and girls of varying ages, some of them bearing the same purplish mark and others simply crushed. One was decapitated and another missing both arms and one leg. The level of violence was shattering; the Cats had been caught unawares and unable to defend themselves. It looked as if they had tried to flee, but there had been no escape.
Despite his revulsion and Panther’s whispered insistence that they get out of there, he pressed on. In the very back room, they found Tiger and Persia.
Tiger had apparently been trying to protect her, his body half flung across hers where she lay sprawled on a mattress that was pushed up against the back wall. The short-barreled flechette lay on the floor to one side, bloodstained and bent. Hawk picked it up. Both barrels had been fired. Tiger’s head was almost torn loose from his body, and his neck bore the same strange purplish mark they had seen on the bodies of the other Cats. He had fought hard to protect his little sister, but in the end it had not been enough. Hawk stared down at him, unable to find the words to express what he was