Urban Gothic

“Javier?” Her cry echoed in the chamber.

“No. I’m Scug. Was Javier the guy with the belt? ’Cause it’s mine now. And you are too. You’re going to be my new suit of clothes.”

Screaming, Heather sprang to her feet and fled. Laughter bubbled up behind her, nipping at her heels. The belt whistled through the air again, striking the wall. Flinching, Heather kept running. In the darkness, she never noticed when the tunnel forked, veering off in several different directions.

***

Kerri fled, plunging headlong into the blackness, heedless of the misshapen forms grasping at her from all sides. Heather vanished in front of her, swallowed up by the shadows. Brett screamed behind her, but when she turned to see what was happening, a tall, lanky form loped toward her, swaying from side to side. It wasn’t Noigel—this attacker was too skinny to be the murderous giant. As it drew closer, she noticed a rusty hacksaw in its hand. Kerri turned and ran, forgetting all about Brett. She pushed past two figures and ran straight into a third. Both Kerri and the creature tumbled to the floor. She sprang up again, kicked the fallen mutant in what she assumed was its face, and continued on. She’d managed to hold on to her club all this time, but had forgotten about it. She swung it as another shadowy figure lunged at her. The club vibrated with the impact and the nail at the end of it drove deep into the creature’s brain. When Kerri tried to tug the weapon free, it remained stuck in the corpse’s head. She let go of it and ran.

Something squeaked to her left, and tiny, childlike fingers clawed at her thigh, trying to grasp her jeans. She lashed out with her hand, struck flesh, and heard the thing grunt. The fingers slipped away and she ran again. She darted to the right, then the left, dashing aimlessly through the wide-open space, seeking only to avoid being caught. A multitude of footsteps pounded along behind her, accompanied by a chorus of grunts, gasps, howls, and laughter. Something whistled through the air and struck her back hard. Kerri cried out, but didn’t slow down. She heard the object—a rock, perhaps—clatter to the floor. Two more whizzed by in the darkness, close enough that she could feel the air shift at their passing.

Kerri swerved again, changing direction. She stumbled around and gasped, her hands touching nothing, no one, her security lost in the darkness. She heard a cry of pain, but couldn’t tell which direction it had come from or who had made it. Brett? Heather? Javier? One of the things? She ran on, her hands held out in front of her, deflecting the walls as she drifted too far to the right and then too far in the other direction, overcompensating. Her foot came down in a pool of something cold and wet. She heard a splash, and then her sneaker was soaked. Her socks squelched around her toes with each step she took.

Her breaths hitched in her throat and chest and Kerri felt the tears start. Not that they mattered in the black pit where she was running blind. It was too much. All of it. How had the evening gone so horribly wrong? How had all this happened? This morning, she’d been thinking about college and her relationship with Tyler. Now Tyler was dead and college . . .

. . . college was probably something she’d never live to experience.

Breathless, she slowed her pace but did not stop. Images of Tyler and Steph came to her again, unbidden. She could hide from her pursuers in the darkness, but when it came to her own memories, there was nowhere to go, no way to hide. She pushed thoughts of Tyler and Stephanie away, thinking instead of her family. She was four years old, and her father’s face wavered, reminding her that there was never a right time to be stupid as he picked up the shattered remnants of the glass she’d dropped. He’d swatted her hand briefly, but that was nothing in comparison to the look of disapproval on his face. He was a wonderful man, gentle and warm and loving but never one to forgive stupidity or ignorance. She wondered how he’d react to the situation she was in now. Would he tell her that it was her own fault—that she should have listened to him when he’d said time and time again that Tyler was no good and that he’d only lead to trouble? Of course, Daddy had probably been thinking about her ending up pregnant or in a car crash, or maybe even in jail. She was pretty sure that even her practical, no-nonsense father couldn’t have imagined that her relationship with East Petersburg’s bad boy would lead to his daughter being trapped in an inner-city slaughter house and hunted like a rabbit by a bunch of mutated freaks.

Kerri was startled from her ruminations as her fingertips brushed against a wall. She stopped running and listened for sounds of pursuit, but the chamber was now eerily quiet. Could their attackers still be out there, hiding in the darkness, lying in wait? Were the bastards just toying with them? Making them think they had a chance at escape before finally jumping out and killing them the way they had Tyler and Steph? Kerri wiped her tears away and squeezed her eyes shut. Her legs ached and her lungs burned. She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. She suddenly didn’t care whether they found her. She needed to rest.

She leaned against the wall. Slick, wet clay soaked through her dirty jeans. Despite the danger of her situation, Kerri was intrigued. She explored the wall with her hands, running them along it. She’d been expecting stone blocks. That’s what the cellar walls had been constructed of. She’d noticed them when they first entered. Instead, rough, wooden planks formed the wall in this section of the underground warren. Wide gaps between the boards let the wet dirt spill out in a thick sludge. This close to the wall, the air was thick with a deep scent of stagnation. It aggravated her throat. She tried to stifle her coughs, not wanting to give away her location, and moved a little to the right. Both of her feet came down in another puddle. This one was wider and deeper than the last, and she clasped her arms around her shoulders and shivered as cold water soaked through both shoes. The sensation just made everything worse.

“Shit.”

Her voice was very small, barely even audible to her own ears, but something else heard it. One of their pursuers howled from nearby. She heard it sniffing like a dog. Kerri dropped to her knees and started crawling through the wet clay. It squirted between her fingers as she slunk away. Gone was the basement floor. This was—somewhere else. She didn’t know where. A cave, perhaps. The water was everywhere, and her hands became slicked with mud.

She felt the ground begin to slope under her, slightly at first, then suddenly steeper, and she had to struggle to keep from sliding downward headfirst. Then the ground changed, and she did indeed begin to slide. The soft, slick mud was still there, but her palms didn’t sink in as much as they had before, and she felt the texture of wood under her hands again. Kerri stopped her forward slide and felt along the wood. If it was hard enough that she might be able to use it as a club if she could pry some loose. That would at least make up for the one she had lost earlier. Her hands shook from nervous exhaustion and adrenaline alike as she felt the edges of the plank and tried to yank it loose. A quick exploration revealed that it wasn’t a single board, but several lengths nailed together. She kept digging, her fingers pulling the mud away from around the wood, searching desperately for something that she could use to defend herself—anything was better than nothing.

She paused, tilting her head and listening. The snuffling thing was gone—or at least silent again. Kerri tried to do the same, working as quietly as possible. With little to go by but her sense of touch, she eventually uncovered the wood’s dimensions. It was bigger than she’d imagined. She pulled along the first edge and got nothing for her efforts. The second edge had a bit of yield, and the third edge lifted awkwardly a few inches, slowly and with a wet sucking sound.

It’s a door, she realized. But to where? A sub-basement? Who puts a door in the floor of a cave?

The air billowing up from below smelled different. Not fresher, but less vile. It was a welcome change. Taking a deep breath, Kerri slid her arm into the black space and felt the coolness beneath. Her fingers failed to touch anything but open air. Whatever might be hidden below was too far down for her to reach it. She stretched farther, trying to feel for some stairs or a ladder, when behind her, there came another noise. It sounded like something metal being scraped across stone. Several guttural voices echoed from either side of her. As she listened, they turned to whispers.

Cautious but quick, Kerri slipped her body lower. The wooden slab dropped as she did, scraping along her shoulder blades and then her back. It was heavy enough to pin her in place. She struggled with it, still trying to stay quiet, and pushed the door up long enough to slide the rest of her body beneath it. Her feet touched something solid. Standing on it, she ducked her head and lowered the door back into place. Then she explored this new area. Her left hand scraped along what felt like a stone wall. It was dry and cool. She raised one foot and thrust it out into the darkness. Kerri sighed with relief when she found another stair. She slowly started down it, wondering what was at the bottom.

***

Javier had lost his belt. He remembered that much upon regaining consciousness. He fumbled around in the darkness, searching for the makeshift weapon, and then it all came rushing back to him. The belt had been ripped from his hands by a shadowed opponent during his escape. But then what? He lay on the ground, defenseless and aching, trying to remember what else had happened. His face hurt, and a nauseating mix of blood and mud blocked one of his nostrils and filled his mouth. Coughing, Javier pushed himself up into a sitting position and shook the muck from his face and hair.

What the hell had happened?

He remembered running. Shouting at the others to follow him, trying to clear a path for them by taking the creatures on himself. And he had. He’d cut through the motherfuckers like a buzz saw, relishing each of their grunts or cries of surprise and pain. Whoever these people were (because despite their deformities, Noigel and his friends were clearly human), they obviously weren’t used to having their prey fight back. He’d been doing fine until he lost the belt. Then they’d closed in on him, and his fear had overtaken his bravado, and Javier had fled.

Javier couldn’t remember anything past that, no matter how hard he tried, so he decided to take a different tack. He gingerly felt his body, wincing as his fingers found dozens of shallow cuts and bruises. He didn’t think he was injured too badly, however. He listened, hoping to hear Heather or Kerri or Brett, but the darkness was silent. It seemed to press against him, as if trying to climb inside his body. Javier mentally pushed back. Satisfied that he’d live, at least for the moment, he felt around him, patting the ground. Then he reached out into the black void. His fingers came in contact with a stone wall.

Then he remembered. The wall. He’d run into it in the dark. He hadn’t known what it was—he hadn’t been conscious long enough to wonder. All he’d known was that he’d run headlong into something hard. Then he’d woken up again. He now assumed that he’d hit the wall with enough force to knock himself stupid.

His luck had held twice tonight—first with the glass pit and now with this . . . whatever this was. He assumed caverns of some kind. Natural or man-made. Or maybe both.

He slid over to the wall and rested his back against it. The silence deepened. There was no sign of his girlfriend or his friends. No sign of their pursuers, either. He was on his own down here. The realization filled him with shame and worry. He felt responsible for all of them. No, it wasn’t his fault that they were in this mess, but as far as he was concerned, they were under his protection. And they wouldn’t have entered the house in the first place if he hadn’t been the one to suggest it after Brett’s stupid outburst.

“What the hell was I thinking?” He muttered the words to himself and spit a trail of saliva and mud away from his lips. “Should have confronted those guys and just apologized for my idiot friend. Or called the police right there.”

He fumbled for Brett’s cell phone. He’d still had it in his hands when they were attacked, but now it was gone. He tried to remember whether he’d stuck it in his pocket as he ran. He wasn’t sure. If he had, his pocket was empty now. Javier’s heart sank. It must have fallen out of his grip during his dash through the cellar or when he crashed into the wall. He patted the ground, searching for it, but his effort s were futile. His hands came up empty. Javier was overcome by a wave of confusion, fear, and despair. Heather, Brett, and Kerri might be dead and he was lost underground, in total darkness, with no weapons to defend himself.

“Well, fuck that noise.”

Javier listened to his words echo. Wherever he was, it sounded like a wide-open space. Grinding his teeth, he slowly got to his feet, taking his time and trying to keep his balance. His legs felt a little wobbly and his head light, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to allow that. Javier had been in bad situations before—situations nobody knew about. Not even Heather. They’d happened when he was younger, before his family had moved to East Petersburg. Ancient history. He’d lived through them, and he intended to live through this one, as well. He forced himself to move forward, trailing his hand along the wall so that he had a frame of reference in the darkness. Javier told himself that he didn’t need the cell phone anyway. Using it to light his way at this juncture would have been foolish. The last thing he needed to do was advertise his position to the cannibalistic freaks.

He made a silent vow to buy Brett a new phone as soon as they got out of here, and then wondered if he’d ever see his friend again long enough to keep that promise.

Water dripped down on his head. Javier glanced upward and then felt foolish. He couldn’t see anything. He made his way through the subterranean chamber, determined to find the girls and Brett if he could, but to also find a way to escape. It had to be down here somewhere. Brett had overheard the killers say so. Javier stopped in his tracks, chilled by a sudden terrifying thought. What if Noigel and the guy wearing a woman’s skin had just been fucking with Brett? What if they’d known he was hiding in the kitchen and rather than killing him right then and there, they’d toyed with him instead, leading him to believe that the basement was the only way out of the house?

If so, there was nothing he could do about it now. Javier seriously doubted that he’d be able to find his way back to the basement stairs, even if he did find Heather and the others. He started walking again. His back felt tight and his neck was stiff with tension. He ignored the aches and pains, doing his best to listen for any possible sound, but other than the occasional drip of water, the area remained deathly still.

***

Paul woke up in transit and captive. He’d been trussed upside down on a long, metal pole. Steel, judging by its texture and weight. It would have probably fetched him a nice price at a scrap yard. Rough cords cut into his wrists and ankles, chafing his skin. He bobbed and swayed as his captors carried him along, trekking through some sort of underground tunnel. Paul was staring at the ground, so he raised his head a little and glanced at the walls. They seemed natural, rather than man-made. A cave, maybe? He’d never heard of caverns beneath Philadelphia, but the idea wasn’t so surprising. Pennsylvania was riddled with limestone caverns and shafts, as well as abandoned iron ore and coal mines.

As his full senses returned, he wondered how he was able to see if he was indeed in an underground cavern. Then he felt a slight breeze on the back of his neck. Despite his terror and confusion, the sudden gust of air momentarily soothed him. When Paul opened his eyes again, his wits had returned. For a second, he wished that they hadn’t, because with his wits came memories of what had transpired—his trip into the sewers, falling through the hole, landing in that foul pool of liquefied bodies and sewer water, and finally—the things that had been waiting for him there in the darkness. Paul raised his head and stared at his captors. His mouth went dry. He drew in breath to scream, but before he could, a particularly hard jostling knocked the air from his lungs again.

They were all around him. He counted at least eight—two on each end of the pole he was dangling from (he saw now that it was some sort of sewer pipe and iron rather than steel), their muscles bulging, grunting with effort as they carried him along. In addition to the pole bearers, there were several more beings scampering along ahead of them, as well as at the rear of the precession. He tried to figure out what they were. Humanoid, certainly, but Paul wasn’t positive that they were actually human. They varied in size and shape, and each was cursed with unique birth defects. Some of the mutations were almost mundane, while others were utterly horrifying. One of his captors was bare-chested and covered by a thick mat of curly black hair, out of which peeked four dime-sized nipples. Another seemed to have double the amount of joints in his legs, arms, and fingers. Paul stared at a misshapen lump of flesh jutting from the thing’s left shoulder, and then realized that the lump of flesh was staring back at him with one small, watery eyeball—a second head, a Siamese twin, not fully developed. What looked like a ragged pink scar was really a tiny mouth. A third creature, a female, appeared relatively normal, but she was obviously pregnant with either quintuplets or a giant lone fetus. Her distended belly stuck out before her, glistening, the bare flesh a sickly, swollen kaleidoscope of purple and black hues. Her massive breasts slapped her ribs as she walked. Clear fluid dripped from her mauled nipples. He wondered if she’d given birth before, and if so, whether it was her offspring that had chewed her nipples like that. Her wild thatch of pubic hair was filthy and matted. She gibbered as she loped along, a thin line of drool running from her mouth and dangling to a spot directly in the middle of her obscene cleavage. Her facial features were similar to that of someone with Down’s syndrome, but her expression was cruel and savage.

Despite the variations in height, weight, and physical characteristics, they all shared a few similar traits. Their skin pigmentation was a mix of gray and alabaster. They weren’t Caucasian or African-American or any other race he could think of. Nor did they appear to be of mixed racial heritage. These beings were something else, but he didn’t know what.

“H-hey,” he stuttered, working up enough saliva to speak. “W-what is this?”

An albino dwarf with pink, rheumy eyes and six fingers on each webbed hand darted forth and hissed at him. Its breath smelled worse than the sewer had. Its teeth were black and broken. Paul screamed, and the thing slapped him in the face. His jaw stung, and he bit the inside of his cheek. Paul’s fear gave way to sudden anger and humiliation.

“Hey, you little shit! What do you think you’re—”

Growling, it slapped him again. Then it grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked hard. Paul screeched as his hair came out by the roots. The dwarf scampered away, clutching its prize. The procession never slowed.

Paul began to sob. He was embarrassed by the reaction, but he couldn’t stop himself. Snot bubbled out of his nose and curdled on his lip.

“Let me go,” he pleaded, hoping they understood him. “Listen, I’ve got a wife and kids. Please let me go. Please? What is this? Tell me!”

“This is where we live,” the thing with two heads answered. Its voice was deep and somber.

For a moment, Paul was too stunned to reply. “W-what?”

“This is where we live. All of us.”

“I d-didn’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was trespassing. I thought the house was deserted, you know?”

Paul heard the plaintive, whiny tone in his voice, but he didn’t care. “I was lost. Just looking for directions. I didn’t know that . . . p-people lived here.”

They walked on in silence, not answering him; not even bothering to look at him. Paul heard distant howls from somewhere up ahead. They sounded inhuman.

“I didn’t know,” he tried again. “I’m really sorry. If you’ll just let me go, I can—”

“You brought tools,” Two-Head said, matter-of-factly.

“What?” Paul frowned, unsure if he’d heard the freak correctly. He had no idea what it was talking about.

“Tools.”

The creature took one hand off the pole and snapped its fingers. Another mutant ran forward. This one had a long, withered, tentacle-like appendage where its left arm should have been. The right arm was normal, and in that hand it clutched Paul’s tool belt.

“You lie.” Two-Head sighed. “You say you are lost, but you came with tools. You came to fix the sewer pipes.”

“No,” Paul protested. “I don’t work for the city. I’m from Uniontown, for Christ’s sake! I’m just here because—”

“It doesn’t matter. Either way, we still have to kill you.” The statement brought a fresh round of pleas and cries from Paul, but his captors refused to respond. They marched along, almost methodically. Some of them carried crude lanterns. A few had flashlights. Most of them were naked or covered with some type of dried red clay. A few wore tattered, dirty scraps of clothing. One—a child or another dwarf, he couldn’t tell which—looked especially bizarre. It was naked from the waist down, clad only in a once-white T-shirt that said, I GOT CRABS IN PHILLIPSPORT, MAINE. Another was nude, but wore a backward ball cap with a logo for Globe Package Service. Paul wondered if the odd scraps of clothing had belonged to other victims, and if so, what their previous owners’ fates had been.

His thoughts turned to Lisa, Evette, and Sabastian. He quietly wept, wondering if he’d ever see them again, wondering if they’d miss him, if they’d ever find out what had happened to him, if they’d go on with their lives without him. He wasn’t resigned to his fate—not quite yet—but things weren’t looking good. The cords binding his ankles and wrists were strong and tight. No way he could snap them. And some of his captors were physically impressive. Maybe he could have kicked their asses twenty years ago, but middle age had softened him. He swore to a God he wasn’t even sure he believed in that if he got away from here, he’d go straight. He’d get a real job again, something legal, and do right by his family. Sure, he’d justified stealing scrap metal as a means of supporting his loved ones, but look what it had led to?

Paul sobbed. His broad chest hitched with each shuddering, labored breath. The temperature in the tunnel grew slightly warmer. The breeze remained steady. The stench of his captors was foul, but there were other smells in the air. Mildew. An earthy odor—maybe clay or dirt or minerals of some kind? And something else, something that smelled like animal fat cooking in a frying pan. It wasn’t until one of the lanterns sputtered and hissed that he realized what the smell was. They were using fat as fuel. Paul had a sinking feeling that he knew what kind of animal the organic matter had come from. Bile burned his already raw throat. He opened his mouth to scream again, but paused as they came to a sudden stop.

They had emerged in a vast underground chamber—a true limestone cavern, just like the ones he’d taken the kids to a few times. It was brightly lit. Fires flickered in an assortment of rusted fifty-five-gallon drums scattered throughout the space. Stalactites and stalagmites dotted the rocky landscape. Paul found himself trying to remember which one was which, and then uttered a crazy laugh. What the hell did it matter? Geology wasn’t his main concern right now. Regardless, thoughts of high school fluttered through his head. Back then, he remembered the difference by calling stalactites “stalac-titties,” because tits hung. Hence, stalactites hung from the ceiling.

His laughter turned into a choked sob.

There were more creatures in the cave. Some of them were sprawled out on boulders, relaxing, staring at him with intense interest and amusement. Others were engaged in various tasks. Two-Head and the rest of his captors carried him to the center of the great chamber. Paul noticed a series of steel barrels had been set up here. There was some sort of makeshift rack above them, manufactured from angle iron, wooden beams, and pipes. Something dangled over two of the drums—something raw and red and glistening. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. Corpses. Two butchered human corpses. Each one had been strung upside down over one of the barrels, then skinned and gutted. Paul was reminded of the deer processing center during hunting season. The bodies were headless, and he couldn’t tell what sex they had been. They’d been slashed open from neck to groin and spread wide, emptied of their internal organs. These had been people once. Now they were just hollowed out carcasses.

“Oh God. Oh my God . . .”

They hoisted Paul higher into the air and sat the pole into the rack. He dangled over an empty drum, the top of his head just inches from the rim.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Don’t do this! Please don’t do this. We can talk about it, right? You don’t need me. You’ve got two already. I can pay you. I can give you anything you fucking want, okay? Just please don’t do this!”

His pleas turned into nonsensical babble as Two-Head and the others calmly strolled away. Another mutant approached. Paul blinked, staring at the creature from his upside-down vantage point. It stared back at him, blinking with its one, lone eye, which was affixed in the center of its face, giving it the appearance of a mythological Cyclops. Its head was smooth and hairless, and its ears stuck out at odd angles from the side of its head. They reminded Paul of cauliflower. It smiled at him with a broad gash of a mouth, revealing sharp but rotten teeth. In its hand was a long, broad carving knife. The silver blade glittered in the firelight.

“Let me go. Hey, listen to me, man. Do you understand me?”

The Cyclops nodded slowly, still grinning. “I understand you. Some of the younger ones don’t. They never learned the above speech. But us older ones still know it. A few of us can even read.”

“What . . . what are you?”

“I’m Curd.”

“I-is t-that your n-name, or your r-race, or what?”

The Cyclops tilted its head and frowned, staring at him with deep concentration, as if trying to determine Paul’s meaning.

“My name is Curd.”

“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. My name is Paul. Paul Synuria.”

“I don’t care.”

Paul licked his lips. “I know, and that’s okay. But listen . . . Curd. Listen. You don’t have to do . . . whatever it is you want to do. I can make it worth your while to let me go. What do you need?”

“For you to be quiet.”

“Okay. I can do that. But before I do, tell me what you really need? I’ll get it for you, no matter what it is.”

“You have everything we need right here. Your brains and heart and kidneys and lots and lots of meat. We’ll even use your bones.”

“No . . . listen . . . oh God . . .”

“If you were a woman, Scug would want your skin, but he’s busy with them other women right now, so we’ll use it for something else.”

Paul sputtered in confusion.

“You’re not the only one here tonight,” Curd continued, slapping one of the bloody corpses with his free hand. “Noigel killed these two. Smashed their heads up, so we couldn’t use the brains, but that’s okay, because there are plenty more of you left. Scug and the others are hunting them right now. We’ll be busy tonight.”

He raised the knife and stepped forward, seizing Paul’s hair in his fist and entwining his fingers through it.

“No,” Paul screamed. “No, goddamn it! Didn’t you hear me? I can give you whatever you want.”

“You didn’t hear me. I already said, you’ve got everything we want right here with you. We’ll use all of you, after I’ve bled you out. That’s how we were taught, and that’s how we teach the little ones. Every single scrap of you will be put to use.”

Paul’s eyes widened. Laughter bubbled out of him again, and this time, he couldn’t control it. It echoed across the cavern.

“Scraps,” he wailed. “Oh, it all comes down to scrap! Scrap . . . scrap . . . scrap . . .”

“It’s time for you to be quiet now.”

Curd yanked hard on Paul’s hair, exposing his throat. Then he brought the knife up and made a slashing motion. Paul shut his eyes, anticipating a flash of pain, but there was none. His neck felt a little hot, but it was warm inside the cave. He heard water running and tried to turn his head to see where the sound was coming from, but Curd held him firmly in place. Paul noticed that Curd had blood on him. Fresh blood, splattered across his ugly, misshapen Cyclops face, and all over his arm. Paul tried to ask him where the blood had come from. Tried to beg him one more time, to tell him why the scrap comment had been so funny, tell him about Lisa and the kids. But when Paul tried to speak, he found that he couldn’t. He heard a faint wheezing sound and wondered where it was coming from. The running water grew louder, and the heat on his neck faded. He shivered, suddenly growing cold and sleepy and nauseated. Curd’s grip on him slackened, and Paul’s gaze drifted downward into the barrel that he was suspended over. He blinked. The barrel was filling with . . .

. . . blood?

Whose blood? Where was it coming from?

And why was it so cold in here all of the sudden?

Then Curd raised the knife again, grabbed a fistful of his hair and began sawing his head off with savage, sweeping thrusts of the knife. He whistled while he worked. Realizing what was happening, Paul willed himself to pass out, but he was dead before he could. The last thing his eyes registered was his own decapitated body, when Curd lifted his head up to show it to him. Blood pumped from his neck like water from a garden hose.

If Paul had been able to, he would have screamed.

FOURTEEN

“So what’s the plan?”

Leo stopped in his tracks, and the rest of his friends did the same. Chris, Jamal, Markus, and Dookie had accompanied them. Some of their other friends who had wandered away earlier had returned, and Perry had told them to stay behind to direct the police on the off chance that they actually responded to the 911 call.

“What?”

“What’s the plan?” Perry asked again. “You were the one who was all fired up to do this. So, what’s your plan once we get inside there?”

“I don’t know.” Shrugging, Leo frowned. His expression was doubtful. “I guess I figured we’d just go in there all hardcore and shit, and find those kids. Fuck up whoever was holding them captive—if there is someone else.”

Perry shook his head. “You boys have watched too many movies. This ain’t Black Caesar.”

They all stared at him, and he could tell by their expressions that they were clueless about his reference.

“You mean you kids have never watched Black Caesar? Hell up in Harlem? Superfly?”

“Hell, no,” Markus replied. “I don’t watch TV.”

“Your daddies didn’t watch them with you when you were little?”

“I ain’t got no dad,” Leo said. “Never knew him.”

Chris nodded. “My old man’s doing twenty up in Cresson.”

“Only thing my dad ever watches,” Jamal said, “is wrestling.”

“I watch anime,” Dookie told Perry. “You ever watch that, Mr. Watkins?”

“No,” Perry admitted. “I don’t even know who she is.”

“Who?”

“This Anna May woman that you just said you watch.”

Now it was Dookie who was confused. “What?”

“Never mind.” Perry sighed and caught Leo’s eye, making sure he had the young man’s attention. “Look, just forget about the movies. My point is, we can’t just go barging in there. We don’t know what’s going on inside. If there really is someone in there up to no good, then we could get those kids killed if we rush in. Hell, we could get ourselves killed. We’ve got to be smart about this. Careful.”

“Okay,” Leo said, “so what do you think we should do?”

Perry paused, cupped one hand over his cigarette, and lit it. Then he stuffed the lighter back in his pocket and grinned.

“I don’t know yet. That’s why I wondered if you had a plan. Let’s just check it out first. No sense worrying about things until we know what we’re actually up against.”

They reached the end of the block and crossed over into the debris-covered wastelands that separated the old house from the other homes on the street. Perry and Leo walked side by side, taking the lead. The others slunk along behind them, casting nervous glances in every direction. Each chunk of concrete or twisted girder took on sinister forms in the dark, transforming into lurking dangers, waiting to jump out at them, gun or knife in hand. The overgrown weeds in the vacant lot became a prime hiding place, and they approached with trepidation. The tall, rusted chain-link fence jingled and swayed in the wind, sounding like the rattling chains of a ghost. The house groaned, as if disturbed by their arrival. Or perhaps anticipating it.

They paused at the bottom of the porch steps. Perry took a deep drag on his cigarette. The tip glowed orange, providing their only source of illumination. Shivering, he turned to Leo and told him to turn on one of the flashlights. The young man did as he was told, but Perry noticed that his hands were trembling. He was scared. Perry scanned the other boys’ faces. They were all scared.

Well, he thought, at least I’m not the only one.

“Keep that pointed at the ground,” he whispered to Leo. “If there are bad people inside, we don’t want them seeing the flashlight through the windows.”

Leo nodded, but didn’t reply.

Swallowing hard, Perry dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it, grinding it into the dirt with his heel. Then he walked up the porch steps and approached the front door. The old boards creaked and popped, bending under his weight. He stopped a few paces from the door and turned around. The boys remained where they were, watching him.

“Ain’t y’all coming?”

“You go ahead,” Jamal whispered. “We got your back.”

“From down there?”

They shuffled their feet and stared at the ground, except Leo, who took one faltering step. He perched on the bottom stair, hitching his pants up with one hand and leaning against the railing, which wobbled at his touch.

Shaking his head, Perry turned around and tiptoed the rest of the way across the porch, cringing each time a board creaked. He stopped in front of the door and took a deep breath. There was an empty hole on the right where a doorbell had once been and worn, faded screw holes indicating that there had been a knocker on the door at one time—probably stolen. There was a tiny peephole in the center of the door, but when he leaned forward and tried to get a glimpse through it, all he saw was darkness. Perry was suddenly overcome with the uncanny impression that there was someone on the other side of the door, staring back at him. His arms prickled with gooseflesh, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“Well,” Dookie whispered, “what you waiting for, Mr. Watkins?”

Gritting his teeth, Perry raised one fist and knocked on the door. The wood thrummed beneath his knuckles, but nothing happened. The door remained closed, and there was no noise from inside. Perry knocked again, louder this time, but got the same result. He rapped a third time, more insistent, then stepped back and waited. After a moment, he glanced back over his shoulder.

“You boys run around the sides and check the windows. Don’t let anybody see you. But peek inside and see if there are any lights on or anything.”

They hesitated, obviously afraid to split up. They looked at one another and then up at him, their expressions unsure.

“Go on,” he urged.

“You heard the man,” Leo said. “Do it.”

Jamal and Chris went to the right of the house, while Markus and Dookie took the left. Perry and Leo watched them disappear around the sides. To their eyes, it looked as though the shadows simply swallowed the four boys whole. Perry still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. He decided not to mention it to Leo. The teens were already spooked. There was no sense in making them any more uneasy.

“What do you think we’ll find in there, Mr. Watkins?”

Perry studied Leo for a moment before responding. A bright, inquisitive intelligence burned in the boy’s eyes. Perry had never noticed it until now. He suddenly felt guilty. His ears burned with shame. Many times over the years, he’d thought the worst of Leo and his friends, and why? Sure, they got up to no good once in a while, but what boy didn’t at some point in his life? No, the truth, Perry realized, was that he’d had no good reason to be suspicious and derisive of the kids all these years. They meant well, Leo especially. They were the future, and maybe the future wasn’t as bleak as Perry had always assumed it would be. Maybe they’d make a difference in the world—provided they made it out of this neighborhood alive.

“I don’t know, Leo. I don’t know what we’ll find in there. But I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to promise me that you’ll stay behind me, and that if something happens, you’ll run, and let me handle it.”

“Shit. I ain’t no punk. I can take care of myself, Mr. Watkins.”

“I know you can. And that’s why it’s important to me that you do as I say. So promise me, okay?”

Leo shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

Perry smiled, looking at the teen with a sudden, immense swell of admiration. The sensation of being watched had passed. Leo shifted his feet, clearly uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

“Um, no offense, Mr. Watkins? But I think I liked it better when you were grumpy and shit. I ain’t much for this touchy-feely Oprah shit, you know?”

Perry snorted, trying to stifle his laughter. Leo chuckled along with him. They were still smiling when Chris, Jamal, Markus, and Dookie returned. All four were solemn.

“What’d y’all see?” Leo asked.

“Nothing,” Chris said. “The whole damn place is locked down tight. The windows are boarded over or bricked up. No back door, at least, not that we saw. Whoever is in there, they don’t want folks getting in.”

“But people do get inside,” Perry reminded them. “If people couldn’t get inside, we wouldn’t be here right now. So, why would someone secure the whole house but not board over the front door, too?”

“Dealers,” Markus said. “It’s gotta be. And we’re standing on the porch of their whole operation. We should jet before somebody sees us.”

“It can’t be dealers,” Perry replied. “Normally, I’d agree with you. Ain’t no shortage of crack houses and meth labs in this city. But if this was a regular operation, we’d see people coming and going all the time. Fact is, we don’t. Usually this place is quiet. Even when somebody goes missing, there’s no disturbance or anything. No gunshots or screams.”

He turned back to the door, studying it carefully. Then he motioned at the boys to follow him. They stepped back up onto the porch.

“Stay behind me,” Perry told them. “I mean it. I don’t want any of you playing badass when we go in there.”

The boys nodded in silence.

Perry reached out and grasped the doorknob. It was cold and damp against his palm, despite the dry air. He turned it.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Dookie whispered.

“The goddamned thing is locked.”

Leo sighed. “So what do we do now?”

Scowling, Perry shook another cigarette out of his pack.

“Mr. Watkins? What do we do now?”

“Hold up,” Perry said, fumbling for his lighter. “I’m thinking.”

“You’d best think faster.”

FIFTEEN

Heather had almost resigned herself to never seeing light again when she noticed a glow in the distance. At first, she thought that her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the glow remained in place, slowly getting bigger as she walked toward it. She gasped, then coughed. The air still reeked of mud and filth, and each time she breathed through her nose, she felt like vomiting, so she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. Her bare feet were numb beyond the point of pain. She was cold and wet and dirty and miserable, bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts and scratches, half out of her mind with fear, but all of that seemed to fade as the glow grew brighter. When she realized that she was actually able to see her surroundings now, albeit in shadow, Heather almost cried, overwhelmed with a conflicting mixture of relief and dread.

The details of the walls around her were not overly encouraging. As she continued on and her eyes adjusted even more to the light, she noticed the rough wooden planks and half-rotten plywood sheets that had been used to shore up the sides of the sloping passageway. Black and red-tinted seepage trickled through the gaps between the boards like perspiration. The clay behind the wood was deep red, but she also noticed limestone peeking out between it. She recognized it from the semester they’d studied geology. Apparently this point of the tunnel joined up with a natural limestone cavern.

She wondered whether Javier, Kerri, or Brett were still alive. If so, she hadn’t heard them since getting lost. She hadn’t heard her pursuers, either. The silence was oppressive and added to her misery. Heather focused on the light ahead. It was definitely getting brighter. She knew it for certain when she looked at her hands and saw the light pink color of her nail polish where before there had only been a vague gray hint of fingernails.

The passageway began a sudden downward descent. She had no choice but to follow it. The makeshift walls vanished, replaced by natural stone. The air quality changed. Gone was the damp, bitter smell of mold and mud. As she continued forward, the air became acrid, drier than she would have expected. There were other new scents, as well. She smelled salt, of all things, and something that reminded her of mothballs.

The ceiling grew progressively lower, and Heather was forced to crouch as she walked. Within another twenty feet, she had no choice but to drop to her hands and knees and crawl. Sharp rocks jabbed at her knees and palms, and water dripped from crevices in the stone ceiling above her, splattering onto her head and back. Then the ground leveled out again, and the tunnel rose slightly. The light grew bright enough to make her squint, and finally, Heather saw something other than more tunnel ahead of her.

She crawled forward into a chamber that had been cleared out and shored up with thick columns of wood and metal pipes old and new. A few stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites jutted from the floor, but most of the space was wide open. Heather had never been great at figuring distances, but she guessed the cave was about fifteen feet long and three times as wide as the tunnel had been. There were no other entrances or exits, save a small, irregular hole in the back wall. The crevice looked barely wide enough for a dog, let alone a human being. Satisfied that no one was hiding in the room. Heather clambered to her bare feet, flexing her joints and staring around in disbelief.

There was furniture down here. All of it was old and in a sad state of repair. Four metal cots ran along one wall, end to end, each of them with a scattering of moldering blankets, mildewed clothing, and scraps of newspaper covering them like nests. The fabrics appeared as old as the furniture, and most were nothing more than shreds. A card table sat crookedly against the opposite wall. The table was covered with yellowed papers and a few pieces of lumpy, misshapen pottery that looked crafted by a grade-school student.

Heather moved into the chamber, squinting against the glare, and saw that the light came from an old kerosene lantern hung above the table. The flame was banked low, but even so, thick, oily smoke billowed from it. That explained the smell of salt and odd chemicals she’d noticed before.

Most of the papers on the table were held down by whatever had enough weight to keep them still. Though there was little by way of a breeze, the smoke trail drifted toward the far wall, where it was swallowed up by the crevice.

She didn’t know how long the room would remain deserted or if her pursuers were still on her trail. Heather scanned the papers quickly, just to see if she could find any information that might help her situation. They crinkled when she touched them. Heather frowned. The papers made no sense. Rather than ink, they looked like they’d been written using mud—or blood. The penmanship was crude, illegible. She pushed them out of the way, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. A scattering of old photographs fell to the ground. She bent over and studied them. They were wrinkled and faded, but she could make out the faces well enough and the houses in the background. Judging by the clothing the people in the photographs were wearing, she guessed they dated back to the thirties. All of the homes looked like the one topside, except that they were new. Indeed, a few of the pictures seemed to feature this very same house.

Heather placed the photographs back on the table. Then she shook her head and pinched her eyes shut for a moment. None of it made any sense. The photographs. The room. The booby-trapped dwelling. The caves. The killers. In the movies, there was always an explanation eventually, but this was real life, and so far, no answers were forthcoming. She’d watched her friends get butchered, and she still didn’t know why—or by whom.

It occurred to Heather that since she was in a cave, maybe she was no longer beneath the house. She didn’t know how far underground she was, but maybe there was a slim chance she could get a cell phone signal. Deciding that it was safe enough to risk the light from her phone again, she pulled it from her jeans and slid it open. The cell phone showed no signal. She tried to dial 911 anyway. The phone beeped once, and the words CALL FAILED scrolled across the screen. Sighing, Heather took pictures of the paperwork, photos and the chamber, remembering that Javier had suggested they document as much as they could so that they could show it to the authorities once they escaped. He’d be proud that she’d remembered, if and when they were reunited. Biting her lip, she finished capturing the images and then put the phone away again. There was no sense in running the battery down while she still had another source of light.

She shuffled some more of the papers around and found a tarnished butter knife that had been sharpened to a point. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make her feel a little better. Next to the knife were some odd drawings—stick-figure diagrams of human anatomy and scenes of torture and mutilation. All had the same crude traits as the other papers. They seemed like the work of an evil, demented child.

Before she could consider them further, something coughed in the distance, the sound echoing through the tunnel that she’d already left behind. Moving quickly, she snatched up the butter knife and carefully lifted the kerosene lantern from the hook on the wall. A small knob on the base of the lamp kept the flame low. She turned it to the right, and the knob moved with a grating squeak. As she twisted, the wick rose higher and caught fire, brightening the flame inside the lantern. Thick, black smoke guttered into the lamp’s chimney.

Satisfied, Heather hurried over to the crevice at the rear of the cave. It would be a tight fit, but she had no choice. Kneeling, she crawled into the cramped space and crept forward. She found herself in another tunnel. The lantern hissed and spit as it was repeatedly jostled. The walls seemed to press in on her, and in a few places, she had to squeeze around rocks to make it through. Despite the tight quarters, she felt more at ease this time, due to the lantern and the knife. The tunnel rose steadily, and she followed it, hoping it led all the way to the surface.

She thought about the neighborhood above, and how frightening and otherworldly it had seemed as they drove through it. Now she couldn’t wait to see it again. As far as Heather was concerned, compared to her current surrounding, the ghetto was heaven.

She prayed as she continued her desperate ascent.

***

Exhausted, Kerri lay still for a long while with her eyes closed. She had no idea how long she lay there. When she snapped out of it, her head and muscles ached, and her jaw was sore from gritting her teeth. She turned over slowly and licked her lips, tasting mud. She idly wondered what she looked like right now, after wallowing in filth and blood the entire night. What would Tyler think if. . .

“Tyler . . .” Her voice cracked.

No. She didn’t have time for that. It seemed all she’d done since his death was to bounce from one emotional extreme to the other. She’d been a wreck, then a female Rambo, and then a wreck again. She wanted to sleep. Just lay there in the mud and drift away.

For a few minutes, she’d been having the most wonderful daydream—half memory and half flight of fancy. Toward the end of the last summer, she and Tyler and the gang had driven into New Jersey and made their way to Cape May one morning. The houses there were all beautiful and brightly painted, and there was a light house where they all went to the top of and took pictures. Later, when that got boring, they’d strolled along the boardwalk in Wildwood, riding the roller coasters and feeding french fries and funnel cakes to the seagulls. It had been a great day. Tyler had been in a great mood. In the arcade, he’d won her an atrociously pink stuffed gorilla with false eyelashes. She’d made him carry the oversized thing around for the next couple of hours. Somewhere at home was a picture of her, the ape, and Tyler all sitting together on the Ferris wheel, grinning like crazy, both of them sunburned to a darker red than the stuffed animal. That part of the daydream was all accurate memory.

The fantasy involved all six of them going to Wildwood again. Tyler was right there with her, holding her hand and smiling as she talked with the others about how they were going to get out of the crazy house and the tunnels underneath it. He kept smiling, and so did all of the others. They behaved like there was nothing wrong, even when the dark shapes strode out of the ocean and stalked toward them down the boardwalk, stinking of mud and blood. Noigel was in the lead, and his hammer dripped blood.

That was what had woke Kerri from her stupor.

She spat, trying to clear the mud from her mouth. Then she sat up and groaned as her stiff muscles protested. There was a strange odor in the air, dry and autumnal. It wafted down from somewhere ahead of her. The darkness was impenetrable—a solid curtain of black. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, but couldn’t see them. That was okay as far as Kerri was concerned. As much as she feared the dark, she feared being killed by Noigel and his fucked-up friends even more. If she couldn’t see anything, then maybe nothing could see her, either.

Kerri crawled. The surface beneath her was stone, not mud, and while it was cold and felt as damp as the level above her had, there was no actual moisture beneath her hands. It was hard to tell which direction she was going in the dark, but she had a sensation of veering slowly to the right, farther and farther away from the trapdoor. She tested the floor and the walls and finally the ceiling, and discovered that the area was large enough for her to stand up. A moment later she did just that. It felt good to be walking again, even if she couldn’t see where she was going. She held her arms out in front of her, fingers stretched as far as they would go, feeling her way.

She’d gone a few more steps when something snagged her hair and pulled. Kerri screamed. Her hands fluttered to her head, slapping and clawing at the attacker. A second shriek died in her throat as she touched the impediment. She’d been expecting a hand, but what her fingers came in contact with instead was long and thin and made of wood. It didn’t fight back when she grasped it. Didn’t move at all. At first, she couldn’t figure out what it might be. A wooden tentacle? Some new booby trap? Then she realized what was tugging her hair. It was the bottom end of a tree root. She calmed down as she removed it from her hair. Kerri couldn’t remember seeing any trees in the area when they’d fled from the street gang. True, they’d had more immediate concerns and she hadn’t really been paying attention at the time, but she thought she’d remember if there had been trees. Here was a root, dangling down from unseen heights. She lifted her arms over her head and waved them around. Her fingertips brushed against more roots. There were definitely trees overhead. That meant either she was farther away from the house than she’d originally thought, or the trees were all dead and gone and their underground root systems were all that remained—nothing more than ghostly fingers, pulling her hair in an effort to remind humans that they’d once existed before the pavement and houses and concrete. She shivered at the thought. Kerri wondered whether the network of roots was keeping the ceiling from collapsing on her. If so, that was a good thing.

The trapdoor that had led into this subterranean chamber was somewhere behind her, but she wasn’t sure of its exact location anymore. She assumed that since she was close enough to the surface to discover tree roots, the ground beneath her feet would begin to climb higher, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

She kept moving. The air was still, without even the hint of a breeze.

Which was why she stopped in her tracks when a puff of rancid hot air suddenly blew across her face. Startled, Kerri lurched forward. Her arms bumped into something in front of her—something soft and slick and yielding. Flesh. Two powerful, hairy hands grabbed her wrists and yanked her forward. She stumbled as another blast of the creature’s breath assailed her senses. It stank like rotten eggs and feces.

Kerri screamed, and the thing in the darkness laughed. Then its arms snaked around her body and squeezed.

***

Just when he was beginning to think that he wouldn’t be able to take the silence for a second longer, Javier stopped and listened. There was someone up ahead of him. No, not just someone. There were at least two. Maybe more. His spirits rose for a second in the hopes that it might be the girls or Brett. But then his hopes were dashed. What followed was a bewildering series of noises—snatches of what sounded like conversation, but like no language he’d ever heard. It sounded like gibberish, constructed to almost make words. He couldn’t tell how far away they were. The voices weren’t alarmed, so he was pretty certain that they weren’t aware of his presence.

His bladder ached. He needed to piss, but Javier was afraid that if he did, the sound or smell would give his location away.

The sound of shuffling footsteps caused him to hunker down. They were coming from a different direction than the hushed voices. A moment later, a third speaker joined the fray, but unlike the others, this new addition was understandable—if barely. His voice sounded like he had a throat full of barbed wire.

“What are you two doing? I thought I told you to hunt! Bad enough we lost them all earlier, in all the confusion. The longer they’re down here running loose, the worse it will be.”

This elicited a garbled, excited response. Then the new arrival spoke again.

“See, this is why you should have stayed put and helped make man-pudding or tended to the fires. I knew you two weren’t old enough to hunt yet. Get on back. Noigel and the others will handle this.”

More chatter. This time, they sounded dejected.

“I don’t care. You can’t hunt if you’re standing around playing with each other’s peckers and making the milk come out. Now go on. Tell Curd I sent you back to help him. He’s got one hung up now, freshly cleaned and skinned. I want you to take all the bones and smash them open and pull out the stuff inside. The eyeballs, too, and his poop tubes. We’ll make a good pudding with it all.”

Another unintelligible response.

“Don’t be stupid. You can’t milk a man once he’s dead. Now get going.”

Javier heard them scurrying away. A moment later, the third set of footsteps faded, as well. He waited another ten minutes, until he was absolutely certain that he was alone again. Then, unable to hold it anymore, he pulled down his zipper and pissed. He wanted to groan with relief, but he held his breath instead. Javier shuddered at the sensation. The stream was hot and heavy and splashed back against his legs. He forced himself not to gag as the piss wet his shoes and cuff s. Then his fear evaporated and the anger came back, a deep and abiding rage that nestled in the back of his skull and pulsated with a life all its own.

Although he couldn’t be sure, it sounded from the conversation he’d just eavesdropped on that one of his friends had been caught and killed. He wondered who it was. Then it occurred to him that maybe the speaker had been referring to Tyler or Stephanie—or maybe somebody they didn’t even know. Somebody from the neighborhood, perhaps? Some drug addict or homeless person.

Who it was didn’t really matter. He intended to kill every single one of these fucking things he came across just the same. No more hiding. No more pissing on himself. No more being a victim. Javier shook his feet one at a time, grimacing at the feel of his wet socks rubbing against his soles. Then he moved forward again, walking carefully and doing his best to be completely silent.

He wasn’t sure how far he’d gone or how many minutes had passed before he heard the voices again. They were muffled and distant. He slowed his pace and crept forward, summoning all the stealth he could manage. His hands trembled and his teeth chattered from the adrenaline and anger coursing through his body. Javier resisted the urge to charge blindly forward, shouting with rage and lashing out in the darkness.

As he progressed, he noticed a spark of light ahead, coming from the same direction as the voices. When he got nearer, he saw that it was a flashlight beam—weak, but still effective in this near total darkness. He paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust and then moved forward again. The conversations continued, the speakers oblivious to his presence. He tiptoed closer, until he could see their silhouettes. Then Javier paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sudden light. He took slow, shallow breaths and tried to remain completely still.

There were three of them. He couldn’t see them clearly. They were too close together, but he could make out enough to disgust him. The only similarities he could see in them was their utter wrongness. Two were malformed. Their skin was slicked with greasy perspiration, and their brittle, matted hair was thin and long, as if it had never been cut. They wore no clothing, but they’d painted themselves with mud and wiped it away in strategic places to act as distinct markings. Both were decidedly female.

The third figure was a man. At first, Javier mistook him for a female, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was really a man wearing a woman’s tanned and preserved skin. He wondered if this was the same maniac Brett had encountered, or a different one with a similar fetish. The man seemed older than the females. He was taller and equipped with broad shoulders that bulged through his suit of skin with each small move he made. Horrified, Javier wondered how he’d fashioned the gruesome outfit to cling so tightly to his body. Skin tight, he thought, and had to bite his lip to keep from screaming.

He studied the man more intently. As far as Javier could see, there was no fat on his body. The woman-skin suit didn’t bulge from a potbelly or prodigious abdomen. Javier had little doubt that the thick fingers on the man’s hands could gouge through the hard-packed dirt around him with ease, and the length of his fingernails suggested that digging like a mole wouldn’t be anything new for him. Most surprisingly, Brett’s belt dangled from the man’s clenched fist. This was the same attacker that had ripped it from Javier’s grasp during the initial fight!

Javier turned his attention back to the women. The one holding the flashlight had hard muscles along her bare back. Her fingers, however, had fused together with thick knots of gray flesh that made her look as if she were wearing baseball gloves on each hand. The same excess skin covered the rest of her body, beneath the mud, from her face to her legs, like obscenely swollen scar tissue.

The other female looked very young, maybe a preteen, and while the hair on her body was fairly thin and plastered down with mud, it covered her entire frame. Her eyes seemed too large for her head, in much the same way as the Japanese cartoons seemed malformed, but without the same symmetry. One eye was oval shaped but oversized. The other was almost perfectly round and seemed to bulge from the socket.

“We haven’t seen anything, Scug,” the woman with the flashlight was saying to the man. Javier had to strain to understand her. The woman’s voice was slurred and slow, as if she were speaking with a wad of cotton balls inside her mouth. The man, Scug, leaned forward, also listening to her intently. Javier wondered if the scar tissue on her body was also present on her tongue or the roof of her mouth.

“I didn’t ask if you’d seen anything,” Scug said, and Javier recognized his voice as the one he’d heard earlier, chastising the other freaks. “I asked where you’ve been.”

She pointed around with the flashlight, and Javier ducked to avoid being seen as the beam swept overhead.

“All over down here. They couldn’t have come through here. Maybe Noigel got them all.”

Scug sighed. He sounded exasperated. He grabbed the belt with both hands and cracked it. The women jumped.

“Noigel couldn’t have killed them all,” he said. “Because when I left Noigel, he was still playing with the one he’d killed.”

The females giggled.

“Was he doing that thing with his pecker?” Scar-Face asked.

Scug nodded. “Yeah. He split the guy’s head open on the wall and then fucked the crack. Don’t know how he keeps from cutting himself on the skull fragments. Them things can be sharp. But he loves it. Maybe he’ll let you lick the brain juice off his pecker later on.”

“Un-uh,” Scar-Face protested, her eyes wide. “He’s too big for my mouth, and last time, there were fleas biting my face. He’s got a nest of them down there.”

“That’s protein. You should just pick them off and eat them. Might be all you get anyway. Worthless as you are, it ain’t like you’ve done anything to earn tonight’s feast. And we ain’t had a bounty like this in a long time.”

Scar-Face pouted. “Be nice to us, Scug. I’ve been teaching the young ones how to talk.”

“Well, it ain’t working. Now let’s get back to it. One of the females gave me the slip earlier. Need to catch back up with her again. The rest of them too.”

The hairy, silent female suddenly whipped her head in Javier’s direction and sniffed the air. Her lips quivered, and her eyes seemed to grow even wider. A thin line of drool dripped from her open lips.

“What’s wrong with her?” Scug asked. “Shine that light-tube over that way.”

Before he could move, Javier found himself pinpointed in the flashlight beam. All three freaks cried out in surprise and alarm. Javier knew exactly how they felt. Before he could even breathe, the hairy girl was in motion. She ducked low and charged him, her fingers spread like talons.

Javier tried to block the attack by throwing up an arm, but he’d been motionless too long, and his legs were wobbly. Instead of countering her charge, he stumbled off balance and slammed against the wall. He had enough presence of mind to turn his hip and protect his privates, but he was too late to stop the assault. The girl hit him hard and fast, her ragged fingernails ripping into his sleeve and into the flesh of his arm. Screaming in pain, Javier tumbled backward. The girl held on to his arm and fell over with him, landing astride his chest. She snarled, sounding more feral than human, and drove a fist into his abdomen. The air whooshed out of Javier’s lungs. She followed up the punch with a second to his balls.

Javier fought back about as effectively as a toddler. He tried to sit up and push her off him, but the girl swiped out with one arm, backhanding him. The force of the blow slammed his head against the packed earth beneath him. Stars danced across his vision. Her nails tore into his arm again. Javier felt a burning sensation, and then warmth trickled down his wrist and forearm. The pain was intense, and his stomach roiled.

The girl’s face moved in as fast as a striking cobra, and Javier snapped his head to the side just in time to avoid having her teeth peel part of his cheek away.

“Jesus Christ! Get off me, bitch.”

“Let’s give her a hand with this one,” he heard Scug say. The freak’s harsh, phlegmatic voice was tinged with amusement.

The girl uttered a grunt and tried to hit Javier again, even as she used her legs to pin him in place. Her head darted forward, teeth snapping. Behind her, Scug and the other woman came closer, their expressions wild and ravenous. The flashlight in the woman’s hand was metal rather than plastic, and Javier knew that if she managed to hit him with it, the tool could do some damage to his head.

“This one’s still got some fight left in him,” Scug said. “We’ll have to bleed him out a little before we take him back. Make him weaker. Not enough to kill him, though. I hate dragging their bodies back. It’s much better if they can walk on their own. Curd says so, too. He says the fresher the kill, the fresher they taste.”

Javier tried again to force the girl from him and sit up, but before he could, the others fell upon him, pinning his arms and head in place. They stretched his arms out, pressed their talon-like fingernails against the soft flesh of his wrists, and slashed across, drawing blood. Javier squirmed and bucked, but their combined strength was too much for him. All he could do was scream.

“That’s enough,” Scug advised the women, licking his lips as he watched the blood flow. “Don’t go any deeper or he’ll bleed out too quick. We just want him weakened. Not dead. Not yet, at least.”

“You motherfuckers,” Javier gasped. “You filthy goddamned—”

Scug struck the side of Javier’s head with his knuckles. Javier tried to bite the freak’s hand, but Scug jerked it out of the way before he could. His teeth snapped down on nothing but air. He felt warm wetness streaming down his hands and dripping from his fingertips.

Scug dangled the belt, swinging it back and forth in front of Javier’s face. “You been looking for this? Your girlfriend recognized it earlier.”

Javier felt veins throbbing in his forehead and neck. “What did you do to her, you fucking freak?”

“Don’t worry,” Scug taunted. “She got away, but she won’t be free long.”

“This one’s dangerous,” Scar-Face observed. “We’ll have to take his teeth out. Want to do it now or wait till we get home?”

Horribly, Javier was reminded of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon he’d watched as a child. Elmer Fudd was hunting Bugs, but the wascally wabbit had convinced the hapless hunter to shoot at Daffy Duck instead. What followed was a routine in which Bugs had asked, “Would you like to shoot him now or wait till you get home?” Despite his terror, despite his pain, even despite the feel of his own warm blood trickling down his wrists like syrup, Javier grinned at the absurd memory.

“We’ll wait,” Scug said. He climbed off Javier and motioned for the females to do the same. Freed of the weight, Javier drew a deep breath. His chest hitched.

Scug slapped Javier again. “On your feet now. Don’t make me ask twice. If you do, I’ll cut off your pecker and stick it in your mouth to wipe that stupid grin off your face—bleeding out or no. Bet it would be the first man-chew you’ve ever had, huh?”

Something in the man’s tone told Javier that Scug wasn’t exaggerating. He would do that very thing. Javier didn’t know what the bizarre term “man-chew” meant, but the rest of the lunatic’s intent was crystal clear. Groaning, Javier slowly got to his feet. Each of the women seized one of his arms, and with Scug leading the way, they marched him into the darkness.

SIXTEEN

Leo and Dookie both leaned against the door, their ears pressed to the rough wooden surface, listening intently.

“Still don’t hear anything,” Dookie said. “It’s all quiet and shit. If they’re in there, then they ain’t talking.”

Mr. Watkins nodded. “I just wish we knew for sure before we go kicking that door down. I didn’t tell you boys before, but earlier, while you were checking the windows, I could have sworn that somebody was watching us through the peephole.”

“Did you see them?” Leo asked.

“No, I didn’t see anything. It was more of an impression. I felt them standing there, you know?”

Chuckling, Markus elbowed Chris in the ribs and whispered, “Mr. Watkins is all psychic and shit. He’s like the ghetto version of the motherfucking Ghost Whisperer, yo.”

“Shut the fuck up. Show the man some respect.” Leo glared at them both. Then he turned his attention back to the older man. “So who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Watkins said. “I’ve been wondering about that myself. If it was those kids you spooked earlier, then I would think that they’d have called out for help when they saw us. Unless they’re more scared of you guys than they are of whatever is inside that house.”

“If there’s even anything inside that house,” Markus muttered.

Mr. Watkins made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Well, step on up and be my guest, sunshine. You can be the first one through that door.”

“Can’t,” Markus said.

“Why not?”

“Cause you ain’t got the door open yet.”

“I told you, I’m thinking.”

Markus grinned. “Sounds more to me like you’re talking, rather than thinking. Maybe you don’t want to go inside. Maybe all this talk about doing the right thing and helping out our neighborhood and change is just bullshit.”

Leo stepped toward his friend, fists curled. Anger coursed through him. He couldn’t believe that Markus was being so disrespectful. Sure, Markus always had an attitude. He’d walked through life with a chip on his shoulder for as long as Leo had known him. And yeah, until tonight, Mr. Watkins had been a grumpy old fart. But regardless of any of that, Mr. Watkins didn’t deserve this shit. He was just trying to help. After all, they had knocked on his door. If it hadn’t been for them, he’d probably be asleep by now.

“Yo, I told you to show him some respect. The hell is wrong with you?”

“Screw you both.”

“Come on,” Jamal pleaded with Leo and Markus.

“Both of you just need to chill out.”

Markus refused to back down. “The fuck you gonna do, Leo? You want some of this?”

“You want to fight? Well, come on.”

Dookie, Jamal, and Chris backed away.

“Come on,” Leo challenged again.

“Don’t think I won’t. I’ve had it with your bullshit.”

“The fuck are you talking about, Markus?”

“You ain’t the boss of me. You ain’t our leader. You ain’t shit. Talking about change and doing the right thing and helping people out—when has anybody ever helped us out? Nothing ever changes for us. All you’re doing is dreaming, Leo. You’re a damn fool.”

Leo was momentarily stunned by Markus’s invective. He struggled not to show it. He couldn’t display any weakness or doubts right now, or the others would begin to have misgivings, too.

“If you don’t like it, Markus, then get the fuck out of here. We don’t need your sorry ass.”

“I ain’t going nowhere. You damn sure don’t run this street. I’ll stay if I want.”

Leo’s fists clenched and unclenched. “Suit yourself. But if you’re staying, then you’ll damn sure quit talking shit and apologize to Mr. Watkins.”

“Fuck that. What’s this old man ever done for me, except look at me funny when I’m out too late? You remember a couple of years ago on Halloween, when somebody broke all the car windows on the block and egged the houses? Remember how he looked at us after that?”

Mr. Watkins stirred. Before he could speak, Leo interrupted.

“Did he accuse you, Markus? Huh? Did he accuse any of us?”

Markus smirked. “He didn’t have to. You could see it in his eyes.”

“You know what? Just get the fuck out of here. Go on home.”

“You can’t make me do shit, Leo. And you keep stepping to me like this, I’m gonna knock you the fuck down.”

“I hear you talking, but I don’t see you moving.”

“Fuck you, motherfucker.”

“No,” Leo said, poking his friend in the chest with his index finger. “Fuck you. That’s your ass, Markus.”

“Enough!” Mr. Watkins stuffed the pistol in his waistband, stepped between the teens, and placed a hand on each of their chests. “That’s enough. Knock this bullshit off. What the hell is wrong with you both? Do you think this is helping somehow?”

Leo tensed. “He started it. I was just sticking up for you.”

“I don’t need you to watch my back out here,” Mr. Watkins said, nodding at the house. “I need you to watch in there. We need to watch out for each other.” He paused, then turned to Markus. His hand was still on the young man’s chest. “I know why you’re doing this.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you’re scared.”

“Fuck you, old man. I ain’t scared of shit.”

“Yes, you are,” Mr. Watkins said, ignoring Markus’s curled fists. “You’re terrified.”

Leo had to give him credit. Mr. Watkins had balls. He could tell by Jamal, Chris, and Dookie’s expressions that they were impressed as well. Markus’s eyes flashed to the handgun in Mr. Watkins’s waistband. Leo held his breath, ready to spring if Markus went for the weapon.

“Don’t even think about it,” Mr. Watkins warned. Then his voice became soothing again. “I know you’re scared because I’m scared, too. We all are. Hell, we’d have to be some crazy motherfuckers not to be scared, walking into this place. But this? This ain’t helping. Okay?”

Markus paused, glancing at each of his friends. Then he looked down at his feet.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “You’re right.”

“Apologize to the man,” Leo said.

“He doesn’t need to,” Mr. Watkins said. “There’s no reason to apologize for feeling the same thing that the rest of us are feeling. But I’ll tell you what you can do, Markus.”

“What’s that?”

“Run on back up the street to my house. Tell Lawanda to go down in the basement and get my crowbar and my sledgehammer. Then bring them back here.”

“You’re gonna smash the door down?” Chris asked.

“Won’t they hear us?”

Mr. Watkins shrugged. “If there is anybody else inside that house other than them kids, then you can bet your ass that they already know we’re here. Especially with all the hollering and carrying on. We’ve lost the element of surprise. Now we’re just going to bum rush them.”

As Markus trotted up the street, Mr. Watkins pulled out his pistol and faced the front door.

Grinning, Leo playfully punched the older man in the shoulder.

“Damn, Mr. Watkins. I had no idea you were so hardcore. Original fucking gangsta!”

Mr. Watkins didn’t smile. He paused, lighting another cigarette. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and seemed sad.

“I’m no gangster, Leo. What I am is a pissed-off, middle-aged black man whose gut sticks out over his pecker now and who can’t get any from his wife except on holidays and gets hollered at for smoking in the house and hates his shitty job and is tired of watching this neighborhood turn to shit, because this neighborhood is all he has left in this world. And there ain’t nothing on Earth more hardcore than that.”

They waited, and when Markus returned, they moved with grim purpose. Without a word, Mr. Watkins handed the gun to Leo and the crowbar to Chris. Grunting, he wielded the sledgehammer. It’s bright yellow, fiberglass handle seemed to glow in the darkness.

Mr. Watkins tossed his cigarette butt out into the street and stepped forward.

“Okay, boys. Let’s go knock on the door again.”

They clomped up the porch, no longer bothering to conceal their presence. Then Mr. Watkins raised the sledgehammer and swung, putting all his weight into it. The door shuddered in its frame. Wood splintered with a loud crack.

“Listen,” Dookie gasped.

From inside the house, they all heard the sound of fleeing footsteps.

“You think it’s those white kids?” Leo asked, nervously fumbling with the gun.

“Only one way to find out,” Mr. Watkins said, and swung the sledgehammer again.

SEVENTEEN

Heather clutched the sharpened butter knife in one hand and the sputtering lamp in the other. Both items jittered from her uncontrollable trembling. Although she’d willed herself to stop, the shaking continued. Worse, even though she could see her breath in front of her, appearing as white puffs of cloud each time she exhaled, Heather was bathed in sweat. Neither condition was conducive to escaping. She didn’t know if it was shock or fear or the temperature or a combination of all three, but it was maddening and aggravating. It was hard enough listening for sounds of pursuit behind her without having to do it over the chattering of her own teeth. The only part of her not shaking was her feet. They were completely numb. She’d tried pinching the soles, but she felt nothing other than a vague twinge. She could still walk, but she had no sensation in them.

Since leaving the strange grotto behind, the ground beneath Heather had been rising steadily as she progressed through the small tunnel. She’d lost track of time and had no way of knowing how long she’d been crawling. The darkness and her own fatigue weighed heavily on her, and it was getting harder to concentrate. Her mind kept returning to the bizarre collection of photographs and drawings, trying to mine some meaning from them—some explanation for the evening’s horrifying events. She grew increasingly frustrated trying to figure it out. Nothing about this situation made sense. It all just seemed so random. So unexplainable. How could such a race of beings exist undetected beneath a city the size of Philadelphia for so long? And what were they? Mutants, obviously, but from where? And from whom? They didn’t seem to have any single racial characteristic or genetic background. How long had they been here? How many people had they killed?

She had no way of knowing. In fact, all that Heather knew for sure was that her legs hurt, her back hurt, and her eyes felt gritty from sweat and dirt. There were blisters on her palms and knees, and the cut on her foot was bleeding again. Lantern smoke drifted lazily into her face, obscuring her vision and making her choke. Each time a new round of shaking overtook her, Heather’s teeth clamped together. She’d bitten her tongue and the insides of her cheeks several times. The slow, steady taste of blood made her stomach roil.

Heather wondered how much farther she’d have to climb before she could escape this nightmare. By all rights, she should have been above ground by now. And yet here she was, still stuck in a damned tunnel with the weight of the entire city over her head. She wished it would all just come crashing down, squashing everything flat. Even that would be preferable to this miserable, torturous scurrying around in the dark. Heather stifled a laugh. Her brother would have loved this shit. He was always playing his dungeon crawl games online. He’d have been right at home here.

A deep, thunderous rumble echoed from somewhere behind her, reminding Heather of her immediate danger. She forced away the self-pity and crawled on, clinging to the hope that she’d get somewhere if she just kept going the same direction she was headed. Then again, it wasn’t like she had much choice. There were no branching tunnels. Her options were moving forward up the slope or retreating back the way she’d come—and she knew what awaited her there. All roads have to lead somewhere. That was what her dad always said, at least. She wondered if her parents were worried about her yet. Would Kerri’s or Steph’s parents be looking for them? Would they have called the police by now? Or Javier’s mother, maybe? No, she worked nights, and Javier hadn’t seen his father since he was three years old.

The air changed up ahead. She felt it shift, running across her face like the touch of light fingers. The sensation was amazing after what seemed like forever in the stifling dampness of the caves. The lantern flickered and hissed, and the flame danced around as if also enjoying the breeze. She had no idea what was up ahead of her, but if there was fresh air, then surely that meant there was a way out.

Heather’s spirits soared. She forgot all about her family, about Javier and Kerri and Brett, and focused solely on survival and escape. She crawled faster. Then the air shifted again, bringing a new stench—a thick, pungent odor of rot and filth, stronger than any she’d smelled so far tonight. Despite her best efforts to ignore the scent, Heather gagged, choking. Ropes of spittle hung from her open mouth. Her stomach heaved. If she’d had anything inside it, she would have vomited. Instead, the muscles in her abdomen cramped, expanding and contracting painfully. Heather wiped her lips with the back of her hand and gasped, trying not to gag again. The flickering lamplight glinted off the sharpened butter knife. She focused on it. When she’d calmed down again, she proceeded onward, breathing through her mouth as she crawled. That didn’t help much; she could taste the repugnant aroma on her tongue. Soon, whatever was ahead of her became too much. Her eyes watered, blurring her vision, and her gag reflex refused to stop. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to puke.

At least her uncontrollable trembling had ceased.

She turned around, raised the lamp, and looked back down the tunnel and into the darkness. If her pursuers were still back there, they were being quiet. She was so close to the surface. She had to be! But she didn’t think she could make it any farther, struggling against that reeking miasma. She debated turning around and returning to the small room.

Heather was still considering her options when she heard chattering laughter behind her, coming from the same direction as the stench. The sound was high pitched and excited. She spun around again, holding the lantern high and thrusting the butter knife out in front of her. Shadows scurried toward her, growing larger with each passing second. Then the creatures skittered into view. Heather shrieked, and something tore in the back of her throat. The things that came for her were obscenities, barely even capable of being called humanoid. These weren’t mere mutations, like the others she’d seen. These organisms were utter blasphemies.

The one at the very front of the horde was horrific enough to leave her staggered, even in the dim light of the lantern. The monstrosity had no body that she could see—at least, not in the traditional sense. Instead, it consisted of a giant head, three times the size of a normal human’s, with a thick, tubular mass of pink and gray flesh beneath it. Something that might have been large fingers or tiny legs or maybe tentacles flailed and bumped. The creature slithered closer. Heather saw its sides expand and contract as the muscles within hunched and strained. Despite its odd extremities, the thing was fast. The appendages beneath its tumor-like body helped propel it forward, clinging to the tunnel floor and pulling with frightening efficiency. Heather gaped, unable to move. The beast was almost mesmerizing in its atrociousness. It stared back at her with wide, wet eyes the size of tea saucers. Its gibbering, drooling mouth was pulled back in a sneer. Gobs of green-yellow snot dripped from its bulbous, misshapen nose.

She barely had time to absorb the shock of the first beast before the second came into view. It had nothing in common with the first. Her mind flashed back to her junior year, and Mrs. Atkins’s biology class. One day, while discussing birth defects, Mrs. Atkins had shown slides of several different fetuses that had failed to mature. The second creature to scramble down the tunnel toward her looked like one of those fetuses brought to life. The eyes in its head were enormous. Its eyelids were so thin that she could see the eyeballs moving clearly beneath them. The mutant’s nose and lips were translucent, and like its eyes, they seemed much too large for its hideous face. The head itself was bloated and misshapen, more of a lopsided oval than anything resembling round. The beast crawled forward on small warped legs and arms. Heather cried out in disgust and horror. Clearly, it should have died in the womb, but it hadn’t. Here it was, an affront to nature and evolution, hurrying along behind its friend and baring blunt, stumpy teeth that filled its mouth. They flashed in the lantern light as it licked its thin lips and squeaked.

A third creature had a harelip that split its upper mouth all the way to its flared nostrils. It had no nose—just two gaping holes where its nose should have been. Uneven teeth and gums were visible through the harelip. Its body was stunted and wrinkled.

There were worse things behind the first three. She heard them gasping and wheezing, squealing with high-pitched voices. Their labored breaths echoed off the tunnel walls. Their fingernails scratched against stone. They poured toward her, a mutant tide of crawling, hopping and in some cases, slithering monstrosities, mewling like hungry babies—which was, in effect, exactly what they were.

The combined stench of the horde grew overwhelming as they bore down on her. It snapped Heather out of her stunned paralysis. She flung the lantern at them and pivoted around on her knees, facing the opposite direction. She heard glass breaking and metal clanging as the lantern caromed off the rocks behind her. There was a brief but bright flare, and the creatures screamed. Heather screamed, too. She bounced off the tunnel wall with bruising force and started crawling back the way she’d come. She hurried, heedless of the damage her mad scramble across the stone floor was doing to her palms and knees. The light dimmed and then fizzled. Darkness enveloped the tunnel once again. Heather didn’t care. She knew the way back to the room. There were no branching passageways for her to get lost in. Most importantly, in the darkness, she couldn’t see the pursuing horrors.

She could hear them, though. With the fire extinguished, their cries grew frenzied. They chased after her again, and while their malformations and handicaps slowed them down, they sounded tenacious and enraged. Heather crawled faster, her teeth bared and her eyes wide, trying desperately to see. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her lungs worked like a bellows. Her gasps seemed to echo back to her. She ignored the pain each time a rock sliced through her palms or scraped her arms. Spurred on by adrenaline and fear, and unable to navigate except by touch and sound, Heather struck her head on a low-hanging outcrop. The force of the blow knocked her flat on her belly. She cried out, and the creatures cheered. Warm blood flowed into her left eye. Her fingertips explored her forehead. There was a cut above her left eyebrow. She winced as she touched it. Heather wiped the blood away and tried to sit up.

Thick, clammy fingers clutched at her ankle. Screaming, Heather kicked, and the fingers slipped away. They returned a second later, gripping more forcefully this time. Other appendages joined in the effort —tendrils, fingers, teeth, and things she was too afraid to identify. Heather spun around and swung wildly with her knife. Several of the creatures howled and spat. Her foot scraped along something that felt like a rib cage. She stabbed the knife downward, slashing at a small hand squeezing her thigh. The tunnel filled with shrieks—hers and theirs. Something warm and wet—blood or spittle—splashed across her cheek. Heather lunged backward, kicking and slashing, and the creatures fell back. She started to scuttle away, but something leaped onto her chest and slapped her face. Despite the mutant’s diminutive size, it was a powerful blow. Her cheek stung and her ears rang. More blood flowed into her eye from the cut above her brow.

Another monster gnawed at her arm. Judging by the feel, it was toothless. Heather lashed out at it and felt scaly skin. She swung her arm, knocking the beast on her chest backward, and slashed at the scaly one with her sharpened butter knife. Both fell away. Heather flipped over and scurried forward again. The knife slipped from her grasp.

“No. No nonononono . . .”

Sobbing, Heather pawed at the ground. Her hand closed on the cool, metallic handle and she seized it. Then she froze, muscles stiffening, her mouth open in a silent scream. She tried to cry out, but all that came from her lips was a fluttering sigh.

Heather was no stranger to pain. When she was seven years old, Heather had fallen from a tree and dislocated her shoulder. The pain had made her nauseous. A few years later, when she’d impaled her calf on a stick while playing tag with her brother and some neighbor kids, the pain had been intolerable. She’d had a few bad weeks where she was almost certain she would never be able to walk without discomfort again. Neither of those experiences came close to what she was feeling now. Dozens of sharp teeth sank into the back of her calf, just two inches below her knee. The pain bloomed like a flower, slowly spreading into something bright and vivid.

Talons slashed at her ankle and the teeth sank deeper into her calf. A hot, sandpapery tongue lapped at the blood welling from the wound. Heather lashed out with her free leg, ramming her heel into the face of the creature behind her. It jerked backward, but not before taking a few pieces of meat with it. Heather spun around and slashed blindly in the dark with the knife. Something hot splashed across her arm and hand. Her attacker emitted a horrid, bubbling squeal and snatched the knife from Heather’s grip. She heard it thrashing and howling instead of trying to attack her again. Above its cries, she heard the rest of the horde closing in.

Hoping that the body of their wounded comrade would slow the rest of the creatures, Heather turned around and limped toward the tunnel’s exit again. When she reached the grotto, she felt her way out of the crevice. Unlike before, the strange room was pitch-black. Some of the fallen papers rustled beneath her feet as she plunged forward.

Behind her, the sounds of pursuit continued.

***

Javier tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. His head drooped as they forced him onward. His eyelids fluttered. Fatigue had settled over him like a coarse, heavy blanket. Each shuffling step seemed to take an enormous amount of physical effort, and when he slowed, Scar-Face and the hairy girl shoved him forward. What he wanted more than anything at that moment, even more than escaping, was to lie down and take a nap. He fought against the desire, still retaining enough alertness to know that if he did that now, he would surely die.

The truth was he was probably going to die anyway, unless he figured out something soon. His captors were ruthless and showed no remorse. They’d cut his wrists with the same practical efficiency and disregard that someone making a salad might show toward a stick of celery. He wasn’t sure how long he’d bled, but when they deemed him sufficiently weakened, Scug had called a halt, and they’d tied his wounds with scraps of damp, mildew-covered cloth. Then they’d applied pressure before marching him forward again. His wrists still hurt, but the bleeding had stopped. He was sure that it would start again—and from more places than just his wrists—when they arrived at their final destination.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, his voice slurred.

His captors didn’t answer.

“Hey,” Javier tried again. “Where are you—”

Scug backhanded him, splitting Javier’s lip open. Wincing, Javier spat blood before he could swallow it.

“No more talking,” Scug warned, cracking the belt again. “Do it again and I’ll gut you right here. Let your insides slip out and show you what they look like, all wet and shiny. Ever strangled a man with his own intestines? I have. Plenty of times. It’s always a funny sight, watching them flap around and choke, eyes bugging out of their heads, faces turning as purple as the guts wrapped around their throats. I’ll do it to you, too, if you don’t keep walking.”

Deciding to take a gamble, Javier just shrugged his shoulders and did his best to smile. It hurt his mouth, but got the man’s attention. Blood welled out of his split lip.

“What are you grinning about?” Scug asked. “You smile too much.”

“I’m just thinking that it doesn’t matter anyway. Do what you want. The police will be here soon. We called them before we came inside.”

“No, they won’t. The police never come. And even if they did, do you think we care? This is our home. Our place. They can’t hurt us here. No man can hurt us here.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“We have always been here. Our people were here before the city, before the buildings and the cars and everything else, and we’ll be here after it’s all gone. Us and the cockroaches and the rats.”

“Your people? What are you, exactly?”

Scug didn’t answer. Javier repeated the question, and again his captor refused to answer, so Javier decided to ask something different.

“Why do you wear women’s skin over your own?”

Scug’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth. He rushed forward, fist raised over his head, ready to strike Javier again.

“This is my skin! My fucking skin. Got it? Now, no more talking. Move!”

Scar-Face and the hairy girl forced him to pick up the pace, and Javier struggled to keep up with them. He tried to keep track of each twisting passageway and of each turn that they made, but he was soon hopelessly disoriented. The weak flashlight beam did little to dispel his confusion. The only thing he was sure of was that the ground seemed to be staying relatively flat, rather than sloping upward or deeper into the earth. His mind began to wander again, and the pain in his wrists and lip dulled. His feet moved automatically, in time with those of his captors. He didn’t come to his senses again until the dwarf popped out of the wall.

One minute, it had just been the four of them in the tunnel. The next, there was a dwarf standing by Scug’s side, chattering excitedly in a guttural, ugly language Javier couldn’t understand. Some of the words were rudimentary English. Others seemed nothing more than a collection of snarls, grunts and homeless syllables. Javier raised his head and noticed a small passageway to their right. He assumed that the new arrival must have come from there. The dwarf was completely hairless, and its naked body was covered with thick black scabs. He listened to its conversation with Scug, and tried to figure out what they were talking about.

“Anyone catch her yet?”

The dwarf shook its head.

“Well, I’ll look into it myself. It’s my fault for letting her give me the slip earlier. Can’t have her hurting the babies.”

The dwarf spoke again. It seemed agitated.

“When it rains, it pours.” Scug shook his head. “How many are there?”

The dwarf held up six crooked fingers.

“I’ll check the nursery,” Scug told it. “Take care of the bitch once and for all. You go find Noigel. He’s probably still fucking that kid’s brains out back near the basement steps. Tell him we have more visitors up top.”

The dwarf squealed a reply.

“You do as I say and interrupt him,” Scug replied.

“He won’t hurt you if you tell him I sent you. Can’t be many brains left in that kid’s head by now anyway. He can worry about spraying his ball juice later. We need him on the hunt.”

The dwarf made an almost comical salute with one hand, then turned and dashed back up the side tunnel.

“And tell him not to fuck these six in the head after he’s killed them,” Scug called after the fleeing form. Then he turned to the women and pointed at Javier. “One of this one’s friends—I’m guessing the girl I was chasing earlier—is near the nursery. The babies are worked up. I’m going to go tend to that because none of the rest of you seems to be able to fucking handle it. You get him situated. Tell Curd that there are more on the way. A bunch of new arrivals just showed up. They’re at the door now. Tell Curd that Noigel will be bringing them down. Give him a hand butchering if he needs it.”

They nodded their assent and Scug skulked away, disappearing into the darkness, heading back down the passageway. Javier tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. New arrivals? Who could it be? The police? The gangbangers who had chased them in here in the first place? Maybe their parents, come to look for them after discovering the car? And who was at the nursery—whatever that was? Scug had indicated that it was one of Javier’s friends and that it was a female. That meant it had to be Heather or Kerri. He felt like calling out, regardless of whether they could actually hear him and telling them to hide because Scug was on the way, but such an effort would only waste energy. He’d be more help to them if he was free. Then another thought occurred to him. Scug had twice mentioned Noigel and something about him skull-fucking somebody. The first time, Javier hadn’t paid attention, but this second time, Scug had indicated that the assault was taking place near the basement steps. Could the victim be one of his friends? Could it be Heather?

Javier’s heart pounded. A sense of urgency swept over him. He needed to get free and he needed to do it now—both for his friends and for himself. With Scug’s departure, the odds were a little more even. He sensed that this might be his last opportunity to escape. He concentrated on his breathing as they marched him forward again, trying to simultaneously calm himself and wake himself up. He allowed the females to lead him onward until he was certain that they were out of Scug’s earshot. Then he took a deep breath and made his play.

Javier lurched forward, shifting his weight. At the same time, he squirmed, trying desperately to free his arms from their grip. His ploy worked, but not without consequences. The woman’s flashlight clattered to the floor. His right arm slipped easily enough from Scar-Face’s grip, but the hairy girl squeezed harder on his left arm. Her nails sank into his wound, and blood flowed again. Screaming, Javier wrenched his arm free and stumbled forward, slamming into the tunnel wall.

He shook his head, trying to regain both his senses and his footing. The women lunged for him. Javier turned to face them. The hairy girl grabbed his left hand and jerked him toward her. She twisted his arm at the same time, so that his wounded wrist and his palm were face up and his fingers were folded back. Her head darted forward. Her eyes and teeth glinted in the darkness. As her mouth came down on his hand, Javier grasped her upper lip with his fingers and pulled. The girl uttered a muffled shriek and let go of his hand. He pulled harder, savagely yanking the lip toward him. It stretched like warm bubblegum that had been left on the sidewalk on a summer day. Javier felt the skin start to tear. Then Scar-Face broke his grip with a blow to his forearm. Both Javier and the hairy girl stumbled backward.

He landed on his rump and his teeth clacked together painfully. Javier tried to get up, but before he could, Scar-Face leaped on him, slamming him back to the floor. Behind her, the hairy girl was moaning and crying, patting at her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lips were bleeding, and Javier felt a surge of savage joy. It vanished a second later when Scar-Face’s fingernails opened four ragged, bloody furrows on his cheek. Her mouth opened and her teeth tried for his injured wrist even as he pulled back to strike at her again.

Javier rolled sideways and did his best to dislodge her, but the woman held on to his legs with her feet. Too late, he realized why. Her double-jointed toes clutched at him like hands. They felt like what he imagined a monkey’s feet would feel like, capable of clutching not only the fabric of his jeans but the skin beneath them, as well. She held on and rolled with him. Her teeth snapped as she tried to find a way past his defenses. He blocked her again and struggled to get free. Behind them, the hairy girl continued to whine.

“Get the hell off me, bitch!”

Scar-Face snarled, well past the point of any coherent speech. Her teeth flashed. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled on the ragged edges of the wound. Javier wailed. Her nails opened new gashes beneath the first cut. Fresh blood flowed. Hissing, Javier twisted his arm, breaking her grip enough that he could push his fingers and palm up against her chin. She couldn’t bite if she couldn’t open her jaw. Scar-Face turned her head and tried to get away, but he wouldn’t let her. He didn’t dare. Sharp as her fingernails might be, her teeth were much more dangerous. Javier thought of the attack on Brett earlier in the evening. He couldn’t risk losing a finger. A muffled cry of frustration slipped past her closed lips and Javier grinned in response.

“That’s right. What you gonna do now, you crazy fuck?”

Scar-Face continued to struggle. Over her shoulder, Javier noticed that her companion was shaking off her fugue and preparing to rejoin the battle. He had to finish this quick. He reached out with his other hand and grabbed her ear, clenching it in his fingers. He noticed that fresh blood was running down the inside of his forearm, but it was only trickling, rather than gushing. He squeezed her ear, pulling and twisting as hard as he could. Javier both heard and felt the cartilage snap. She shrieked in agony and he yanked a second time, trying his best to pull her ear off completely. She was too preoccupied with her pain to attack him, and the hairy girl cowered against the tunnel wall, suddenly afraid. Javier pulled a third time. The woman thrashed on top of him as he twisted. He screamed right along with her, no longer caring if any of the other creatures heard him. He was focused only on tearing her ear from her skull. They rolled out of the range of the flashlight beams, and Javier heard something rip. A moment later, he was free—her severed ear still clutched between his fingers.

Scar-Face howled in the darkness. Javier clambered to his feet, tossed the ear at her and then kicked her in the face. Her nose exploded beneath the sole of his shoe. He kicked again, catching her in the ribs. His third kick slammed her in the temple. The hapless woman went limp. Javier didn’t care. He was aiming a fourth kick when Scar-Face’s companion leapt onto his back. Her bloodied, swollen lips pressed against the back of his neck, but he felt no teeth. Javier realized that she was either too panicked to bite him or he’d damaged her mouth even more than he had first thought. One of her arms wrapped around his throat. The other clawed at his face. Her fingers sought his eyeballs. Moving fast, Javier stumbled backward, slamming her into the rock wall. Then he lurched forward and did it again. After several collisions, the hairy girl slipped from his back, unconscious.

Panting for breath, he studied them both. Their chests rose and fell slightly, but their eyes were closed. He didn’t think they were faking, but there was only one way to be certain. He cocked his head, listening. The tunnels were quiet. If the sounds of their battle had been noticed, then whoever was lurking in the darkness was remaining silent. Javier didn’t think that was a possibility, though. He was positive that they were alone—for now.

Kneeling, he leaned over the hairy girl, wrapped his bloody fingers around her warm neck, and squeezed. Her eyes shot open, bulging in their sockets.

“Auullkgh!”

The sound was not a word, though perhaps it was meant to be one. Javier did not know and didn’t care. His fingers pressed in on her carotid artery, and on the thick vein that mirrored it on the other side of her delicate, grimy neck. Both veins throbbed beneath his fingertips. He could almost feel the blood surging through them.

She tried one last time to get away and her fingers sank into his thighs as he squeezed harder still. He ignored the pain, and watched her, relishing the expression on her face when she realized that she could not breathe. Her swollen lips parted, and Javier increased the pressure. Every muscle in his arms and legs stood out. He shivered with strain. His sweat and blood from his wounds dripped onto her face and chest. Javier was dimly aware that he was panting.

The strong pulse under his fingertips slowed and stuttered and then stopped. Still, she tried to breathe. Still, he kept his grip firm. Her legs thrashed, kicking and flailing. She slapped and clawed at the floor. Javier maintained his vise grip and squeezed as hard as he could. His grin grew wider.

A moment later, she stopped struggling.

Javier held her a moment longer than that, then finally released his hold. The hairy girl didn’t move. Not satisfied, he seized her head in both hands and turned it to the side until her neck snapped. It was one of the most satisfying sounds he had ever heard.

He rested a moment with her corpse in his lap and caught his breath. He examined the cuts on his wrists. Both were bleeding, but not badly enough that he’d die or lose consciousness. Although the fight had reopened them, both wounds were clotting satisfactorily. They’d need to be cleaned and stitched later, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. His main concern was fatigue. He’d need to rest soon, if only for a few minutes. He listened again, but the tunnel remained quiet. The only sound was the unconscious Scar-Face’s low, shallow breathing. Javier shoved the hairy girl from his lap. Her corpse sprawled across the tunnel floor. He stared down at her and spat in her face.

Then he turned his attention to the other one.

He kicked and stomped on Scar-Face, turning her to jelly. He relished every breaking bone, every shattered rib, and every ruptured organ. He laughed when one eyeball spurted from its socket and when shards of broken bones tore through her flesh. Then, still not satisfied, he leaped into the air and jumped up and down on her corpse. Flesh and blood and hair matted between the treads of his shoes. Then he dipped his index finger in her remains, and used her blood to add two more slash marks to the scorecard on his arm.

When he was finished, Javier picked up the flashlight. His body trembled and ached. His teeth were chattering. He’d never felt more alive than he did at that moment.

“Ready or not,” he called, “here I come!”

He ran back the way they’d come, calling out for Scug to come and play.

***

Kerri grabbed the arms that had encircled her in the darkness and tried to dislodge them, but it was like trying to push stone. Although her assailant’s flesh was soft and slippery with sweat, solid, massive muscles bulged beneath the skin. They rippled as the creature squeezed harder. Kerri tried to scream but could barely even breathe as the air was forced from her lungs.

The thing laughed again. Its grip slackened just enough that Kerri had time to draw a breath. She inhaled the foul air it had just exhaled, and then the creature squeezed again, mashing her breasts and abdomen against its body. Her arms were now pinned to her sides. Her hands flailed helplessly.

“Hugs,” the monster rasped in an oddly childish voice. “I give you hugs.”

“Get . . . off. . . ME!” Her demand was half-scream, half-gasp, and it only seemed to amuse the creature even more. Its laughter echoed through the darkness, seeming to come from every direction at once. There was no hint of menace in its laugh. It sounded more like glee and wonder.

“Nice. Pretty.”

Kerri thrashed in the mutant’s viselike grip, shaking her head furiously back and forth, but nothing broke its hold.

“Kisses,” it said. “I give you kisses.”

“Oh, God . . .”

Something long and wet and smelling of sulfur and rotten meat touched her face, licking her eyes and then her nose and then slipping between her lips. She thought of earlier in the night, when she’d bitten a previous attacker’s tongue off, and steeled herself to do the same again, when the proboscis was suddenly pulled away. Stinking, hot saliva dripped from Kerri’s face.

“Stick you,” it panted. “I stick you now. I stick you in the wet place.”

Kerri closed her eyes, anticipating the thrust of a blade or other weapon into her body at any moment. Instead, she felt something warm and hard pressing against the fabric of her groin. Shuddering, she realized what it was.

“No!”

“I stick you now,” the creature repeated. “I stick you in the wet place.”

Its breathing grew harsher and more rapid. The length of flesh pressing against her crotch stiffened even more, seeming to pulsate in the darkness.

“Let me go,” she wailed. “Goddamn you, let me go. Don’t do this! Stop it!”

The creature froze, muscles locking up. It groaned softly, and then Kerri’s jeans grew wet. At first, she wasn’t sure what had happened but then she caught a whiff of something ammonia-like. Fishy. It reminded her of how sidewalks smelled after a rainstorm. She knew what it was. Under normal circumstance, the smell might have brought back fond memories of all the times she and Tyler had made love. Instead, it simply repulsed her.

“Uhhhh,” her captor groaned. “When you wiggle, I go boom.”

At least it can’t rape me now, she thought. It’s already shot its wad.

But then the penis pressed against her again, seeking a way inside her jeans, and Kerri realized that if anything, the creature’s erection had grown bigger.

“I stick you now,” it promised. “You not wiggle so much this time. You be good. I don’t want to go boom too early like before. Okay?”

Its tone was gentle. Almost loving. With a cry, Kerri ripped one of her arms free and slapped at the darkness, connecting with her would-be rapist’s face. Surprised, it released her. Kerri fell to the ground and backpedaled as quickly as she could. She was nowhere near fast enough. A massive hand seized her ankle and dragged her back across the floor. A moment later, she was being lifted into the air again. The fingers that caught her face were rough and callused, and stretched her lips almost to the point of rupturing them as they muffled her next scream.

“I tell you to stop wiggling. You’ll make me go boom again. Not time yet. No fun for you. Want you to have fun. Want you to like me. Then you stay and we not eat you.”

Kerri tried to pull away, but she was no match for the beast’s impressive strength. It carried her to the hard stone floor, and she felt its body pressing against her. It kissed her again, slobbering all over her face. Its tongue flickered across her cheeks and neck, as if the creature were slowly savoring the taste of her. Kerri moaned in revulsion. The thing misinterpreted the sounds as ones of anticipation. Sighing, it pawed at her jeans. Kerri tensed as the fingers trailed across her zipper. Then she reached out with one hand and grabbed its erect penis. At the same time, her head darted forward and her teeth snapped shut on what she could only assume was the creature’s nose.

The thing’s penis was wet and sticky and her hand slipped free of it when she tried to pull. Her other attack was more successful. She clamped her jaws shut and ground her teeth together, biting hard. She felt its nose burst inside her mouth like a chocolate-covered cherry.

She bit harder, shaking her head back and forth. Screaming, her attacker tried to pull away. It sat up, but Kerri hung on, squeezing her jaws with all of her remaining strength, determined not to let go. More blood ran down her throat. Her attacker leapt to his feet. Suddenly, Kerri’s teeth came together, severing its nose completely.

She stumbled upright and spat the knobby piece of flesh onto the ground. The monster wailed, totally ignoring her now.

“Dy dose,” it shrieked. “Do dit dy dose off !”

She stumbled to the side and pressed her back against the wall. Then she crouched, waiting, trying to block out the terrible screams. The thing cried and howled for what seemed like an eternity. Kerri slowly crept away, keeping her back to the wall. There was silence for a moment. Then it screamed again from a different point in the distance.

“Der dar do, ditch? Der dar do?”

It’s going in the opposite direction, she thought. Just keep quiet and let it go.

It screamed again from even farther away.

She waited until it was gone. There was silence again after that, except for the sound of her breathing. Kerri huddled in the darkness and felt the tears again, but not from panic this time. Not really. These tears were caused by loss. She was horrified by what she’d just done—by everything that she’d done so far to stay alive. She felt like she’d lost a part of herself in the transition, an important part that she’d never be able to regain. Every tragedy she’d endured in the past eighteen years felt insignificant in comparison to the horrors of this evening.

She shivered, feeling the slick of her attacker’s vile seed drying on her jeans. His stench was on her body. Earlier she had smelled of lavender perfume and the Axe body spray Tyler favored. Now she smelled like a dead animal. Even though he hadn’t succeeded in raping her, she felt as if her attacker had still violated her. She needed to get out of this dark crevice, no matter what the cost. Even if it led her directly into the hands of more of these freaks, she needed to get away from this subterranean chamber. She doubted anything else would ever matter as much again as that simple, desperate need. Her hands shook with controlled fury. Every part of her hurt, shook, and shivered as if electrified. Her mouth tasted sour and she spit again and again, hoping to get rid of his taste.

Kerri sat there in the darkness for a long time, mourning not only her boyfriend and her friends, but also herself.

EIGHTEEN

Perry swung the sledgehammer again, smashing its broad head into the door. There was a loud crack and more wood splintered as the hammer broke through the barrier. Behind him, several of the boys cheered. Woodboring insects squirmed around the edges of the hole. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging them. Blinking, Perry swung again. This time, he aimed for the ornate brass doorknob. He connected hard. The vibration ran up through the hammer handle and into his arms, numbing his hands. He set the sledgehammer down, leaning it against the porch railing. Then he turned around and held his hand out to Chris.

“Let me see that crowbar.”

Chris handed it to him, and Perry went to work on the doorknob. It gave way easily enough, tumbling to the porch and rolling across it before landing on the sidewalk. Dookie started to run after it, but Perry stopped him.

“Leave it.”

“But that’s brass,” Dookie protested. “You know how much that shit is worth down at the scrap yard?”

“Leave it alone,” Perry repeated, turning back to the door. “We’ve got more important shit to worry about right now.”

His knees popped as he stood, and his hands ached from the exertion. Perry knew that he’d regret it tomorrow when his arthritis was flaring, but right now, he didn’t care. He pushed on the door, leaning his weight into it. Still, the heavy barricade refused to move.

“What the hell?” he muttered. “I think there’s something on the other side of this thing.”

Leo rushed to the door, bent over, and peered through the jagged hole made by the sledgehammer. His eyes widened. Then he glanced up at Perry.

“It looks like a big piece of metal or something.”

“Shit.” Sighing, Perry wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Okay, you boys help me get this door out of the way. Then we can see what we’re dealing with.”

“Well,” Jamal said, “now we know, right?”

Perry pried at the door’s hinges with the crowbar.

“Now we know what?”

“That whoever is inside there must be holding them white kids hostage. Why else would there be metal blocking the doorway.”

“The kids could have put it there themselves,” Markus pointed out. “Try to keep us out and shit.”

“They didn’t know we were coming,” Leo said.

“Maybe not. But they damn sure heard us trying to break through this door.”

“Yeah, but then we would have heard them dragging the metal in place.”

Perry snapped the hinges free, set the crowbar down, and grabbed the door. The boys ran to his aid. Together, they hefted the wooden slab out of the door frame and carried it down the porch steps and into the yard. Then they inspected the second obstruction. It was indeed metal—steel, in fact. It completely blocked the opening. Perry could see no rivets or welding marks. It was one solid piece, as best he could tell. He rapped on it with his knuckles and then struck it with the crowbar, but it had no effect—not even a dent.

“Shit.”

“Can you smash it down with the sledgehammer?” Chris asked.

“I can try,” Perry said. “But I don’t think that’s gonna get us anywhere. That son of a bitch sounds pretty damned thick.”

Leo cocked his head, studying the steel blockade. “There’s a hole in it.”

Perry frowned. “Where?”

“Up near the top.” Leo pointed. “See? It’s small, but it’s there.”

They all glanced at where he was pointing. Perry squinted, and then saw it. The hole was about five inches from the top of the barrier and very tiny, no bigger than the tip of his pinky.

“It looks like a peephole,” Chris said.

“I think that’s exactly what it is,” Perry replied.

“Can you hammer it there?” Dookie asked. “Maybe it’s weaker around that spot.”

Perry shook his head. “No. That steel is still pretty thick. I don’t think hitting it there will do any good.”

Leo took the crowbar from Perry’s hand and reared back, clutching it in both hands. Then he shoved forward, slamming it into the bottom of the door, right into the part where the metal met the floor. Dookie shone the flashlight on the doorway. Leo looked up at Perry.

“Hit it.”

“That’s not going to—”

“Go on,” Leo insisted. “If we can get the crowbar wedged in under the metal—even a little bit—maybe we can raise it up or move it out of the way.”

“Yeah,” Perry agreed slowly. “Maybe so. But that means you’re going to have to hold the crowbar in place, and if I miss when I’m swinging, I could break your hand or worse.”

Leo grinned. “Then don’t miss, Mr. Watkins.”

“Nobody likes a smartass, boy,” Perry said, returning his grin. Then he glanced at Dookie. “Keep that flashlight trained on the crowbar. Don’t shine it in my eyes or nothing.”

Dookie nodded. “I won’t.”

Perry grabbed the sledgehammer, steadied his aim, and swung. The broad hammerhead struck the end of the crowbar with a loud metallic clang. Both tools shuddered. Leo flinched, but his hands remained steady, holding it in place. Perry swung again and again—a dozen times. He didn’t think they were making any progress, but then Leo told him to stop.

“Look there,” the boy said. “It’s underneath the metal. Give it a few more whacks.”

Licking his lips, Perry struck the crowbar a half dozen more times. Each blow rang out down the street, but if anyone heard the commotion, they didn’t show up to investigate. When he was finished, he glanced toward his home, hoping to see the flashing red lights of a police car or other emergency vehicle. Instead, all he saw was darkness.

Leo stood, flexed his hands and fingers, and then pushed down on the crowbar. He grunted with exertion and the veins in his neck and forehead stood out, but the steel barricade didn’t move.

“Here,” Perry said, gently ushering him aside. “Let me give it a try.”

He applied his weight to the crowbar. At first, it didn’t budge, but then slowly, with a loud groan, the metal began to slide upward.

“That’s it,” Leo said. “Keep going, Mr. Watkins!”

Perry pressed harder, grunting with the effort. The barrier slid higher. Judging by the feel, he guessed that it was affixed to some type of hidden pulley system. He wondered who had manufactured it and why.

“Get underneath it,” he gasped. “Heavy.”

The boys darted forward and slid their fingers into the crack.

“Hold it there,” Perry said. “Don’t let it fall. If it starts to slip, jump clear. Don’t need any of you getting your fingers chopped off.”

When he was sure they had a firm grip on the door, Perry released the crowbar and moved to help them. The metal slid back down an inch, but the boys managed to hold it aloft. Perry grabbed the edge, wedging himself between Markus and Jamal. The surface was cold and rough.

“Okay,” he said. “Count of three, let’s lift it as high as we can. One . . . two . . . three!”

Moving as one, they strained and groaned, lifting the heavy slab of metal higher. They stood slowly. Perry’s knees popped with the effort. The door squeaked as it rose over their heads. They gave it one last shove and heard something click into place. The steel barrier disappeared, held aloft by some hidden mechanism. The house stood open to them, a yawning, black mouth. Perry peered into the darkness and saw some kind of foyer.

“Okay.” He sighed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Y’all ready?”

The boys nodded, but none of them spoke. They stared straight ahead, as if hypnotized.

Perry retrieved the handgun from Leo and gave him the crowbar. Markus hefted the sledgehammer. Chris, Jamal, and Dookie wielded the flashlights. Taking a deep breath, Perry stepped inside. He moved cautiously, licking his lips as he walked. His breaths were slow and deep, his pulse fast. The pistol trembled in his hand. The kids followed him one by one.

The dark foyer smelled of mildew and rot. A hallway and multiple closed doors led off from it into other parts of the house. The walls were covered with peeling yellow wallpaper and splotches of black mold. Rat holes riddled the baseboards. The floorboards were warped, and chunks of plaster dangled from the ceiling. Also hanging overhead was a string of construction lights, rigged together with an extension cord. They weren’t on. Perry wondered idly if they were still functional.

The house was utterly silent. No voices. Nothing attracted by their noisy entrance. Not even the ever-present sound of rats or insects scurrying in the walls—something each of them would have expected. Even the distant sounds of traffic and other noises from up the block seemed nonexistent despite the open doorway out to the street, as if the house was muffling all outside sounds.

The soles of their feet stuck to the floor. When Dookie shined his light onto the floorboards, they saw why. They were standing in the middle of a large brown stain. It looked like somebody had dragged something across the floor. Perry knelt, trying to figure out what the stain was. He touched it with his index finger.

“Shit.”

“It’s shit?” Dookie asked, his voice tinged with disgust and disbelief. “Fuck. I’m standing in it!”

“No,” Perry said. “It’s not shit. It’s blood. Still tacky, too. Fresh. Not quite dried yet.”

“Motherfucker . . .” Jamal stepped out of the bloodstain and wiped his feet on the wall. His shoe sank into the plaster.

“Hello,” Leo called. “Anybody here?”

His voice seemed oddly muffled, as if the walls were sucking it up.

“Hello,” he tried again. “We’re here to help you.”

“Hey, white kids,” Markus bellowed, grinning. “Where you at? Come on out!”

Chris elbowed him in the ribs. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

Still grinning, Markus approached one of the closed doors. The floorboards creaked as he crossed the foyer. He held the sledgehammer in one hand and opened the door with the other.

“Wait,” Perry warned. But before he could move, the door swung open, creaking on rusty hinges.

Markus peered inside the room and shrugged. “Ain’t nothing in there.”

“Let me see.” Perry moved past him, motioning at Dookie to follow him with the flashlight. They stepped inside the darkened room, and Dookie shined the flashlight into the corners, sweeping it around in a wide arc. The interior was desolate, just like the foyer. There was no furniture or appliances, just a few scraps of dirty cloth, crumpled pages from an old newspaper, and a crushed soda can. Otherwise, the room was barren. It smelled musty. Dust swirled in the flashlight beam. Perry wrinkled his nose.

“So what now?” Leo asked.

“We look around,” Perry said. “Try to find them. Judging from that blood out there, at least one of them is hurt.”

“We should split up,” Jamal suggested. “That would make things a lot easier.”

“Oh hell, no!” Chris shook his head. “Splitting up is the stupidest thing we can do. I say we go back outside and call the po-po again. Tell them about the blood and shit.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Perry agreed, stepping back into the foyer. “You go on back and call them again if you want. I’m gonna follow this blood trail. Hand me that flashlight, Dookie.”

Dookie clutched the light protectively. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Watkins, I’ll hold on to it. I’ll come with you, though.”

“Okay. Good. Anybody else coming?”

Leo stepped forward, as did Jamal. Markus shrugged and then nodded. Jamal and Chris looked at each other.

“You go ahead if you want,” Jamal told his friend. “I’m staying.”

Chris’s shoulders sagged. “Guess I’m staying, too. I ain’t no punk.”

They started down the hallway. Dookie was in the lead, with Perry just a few steps behind him. Markus and Chris followed them, while Jamal and Leo brought up the rear. Dookie kept his flashlight trained on the floor, and they followed the blood smear through numerous twists and turns. The house’s layout made no sense. To Perry, it seemed like someone had added walls and rooms and passageways at random. Doors opened into walls. Hallways terminated in dead ends. The whole thing was bewildering and disconcerting. Occasionally they called out, hoping for an answer to guide them in the right direction, but the house remained silent.