Dead Waters - Anton Strout [86]
“Good luck with the bureaucrats,” Wesker said with a bit of snip to it.
Jane gave him a look that shut her boss up. She turned back to me, giving a nervous smile. “No dying tomorrow night, okay?”
“I’ll try not to,” I said. “I’ll let Connor steer the boat. That should lessen the odds a bit.”
22
I filed the requisition for the boat the next morning, and once funds were released for the new fiscal month around noon, the Enchancellors approved it and the boat was ours by nightfall. All in all, a day’s delay was a fairly speedy process, by Department standards anyway.
To be on the safe side, we brought the F.O.G. boat into Wards Island at a different angle, one I had hoped would be less filled with aqua-zombies. Whether it was the fact that Jane wasn’t there to draw them to her or not, we got to the island without being assaulted and tied off against the broken remains of the old dock there.
From the outside, the lighthouse looked pretty much as we had left it the other night, but since we were now there looking for the freshly reborn Professor Redfield, I had my bat at the ready as Connor, the Inspectre, and I pushed our way back in through the main doors.
“Just as I suspected,” I said in a whisper. “Still creepy.”
“And it just got creepier,” Connor added, just as quiet. “Look.”
The interior of the lighthouse wasn’t the way we had left it. Most of the film equipment was gone, and what little remained was trashed, broken, or knocked over amid the old, weathered furniture.
“Damned budget,” the Inspectre said. “We’re a day late and a professor short.” He gestured toward the spiral staircase that ran along the opposite wall and the three of us started up through the lighthouse. Every floor was in the same state, but other than the destruction and damage, the place was deserted. We all came back down the stairs, me at the back of the pack with my bat flipped up casually over my shoulder as we reentered the open room on the main floor.
I slowed down as I came off the staircase, looking around the main room again.
“Does something seem a little out of whack with the perspective in here?” I asked.
“It’s hard to tell among all the debris,” Connor said, looking around. “What are you seeing, kid?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, following the curve of the wall. “The wall by the stairs seems a bit. . . off.” I raised my bat and traced it along the wall, tapping. The thick, old plaster chipped away as I went, turning to powder after so many years, but the sound was a solid one. Until I hit the area just below the stairs, that was. There the sound changed, the heft of my retractable steel bat echoing out in a tone different from the rest.
“Well, well,” I said, searching along the wooden beams that ran up and down bordering the section of open wall. I stepped closer to the beam nearest me and saw the slightest hint of a break where the plaster disappeared behind the wood instead of meeting it. I pressed the section of wall and felt it give under my hand, the entire section of wall opening up into a secret room behind it.
“Nice going, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “You want to go in first?”
I shook my head. “After you.”
“How kind,” Connor said, and headed in.
“Not really,” I said. “I just figure if it’s booby-trapped, at least I get a few more seconds of feeling good about finding the door while you trigger it instead of me.”
“Nice,” Connor said, slowing down as he continued into the dark behind the secret door. The Inspectre went in next and I followed, my eyes quickly adjusting to the low light. We were in a dim, windowless chamber that looked like a sinister version of the professor’s NYU office, except most of the shelves here held arcane-looking relics instead of movie miniatures. Huge gaps along them led me to believe that much of the materials there had been removed. The rest of the room had the skeletal remains of film equipment—camera lenses, light rigging, an editorial deck, but it was the arcane stuff scattered throughout