Urban Gothic

All six of them jumped when they heard a thunderous crash behind them. The echoes vibrated through the walls. Plaster and dust rained down on them. Perry’s finger jerked. If he’d had it on the trigger, the gun would have gone off. The crowbar slipped from Leo’s hand and clattered on the floor. Chris dropped his flashlight and it rolled away from him, coming to rest in the rust-colored blood slick.

“What the hell was that?” Jamal shouted.

“I think it was that metal door,” Perry said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the front.”

“But what about them kids?” Leo asked.

“Fuck them kids,” Markus said. “This place is a motherfucking death trap.”

For once, Perry agreed with the belligerent teen. He’d seen enough of the house’s interior to know that it was even more dangerous than he’d suspected. It would be too easy for them to lose their way in here, too easy to be injured in an accident—or worse. He grabbed Dookie’s arm and herded him past the others, then turned around and motioned at them to follow. Chris bent over and retrieved his flashlight, grimacing as he wiped the blood on his shirt. Leo picked up the crowbar.

“Come on,” Perry urged. “Let’s go.”

Before they could move, however, they heard footsteps. It was impossible to tell what direction they were coming from. They seemed to issue from everywhere at once. The walls shook with each thudding step, and the makeshift lighting system overhead swung back and forth.

Perry grabbed Dookie’s arm again and led him back the way they’d come. Leo and Chris followed him. Markus and Jamal hesitated. The footsteps grew louder.

“What are you doing?” Markus asked. “They’re coming from that way!”

“No, they’re not,” Perry argued. “They’re coming from down that hall.”

“The hell they are.”

“Listen.” Perry scowled. “We don’t have time for this. Now, let’s go.”

“I’m telling you,” Markus insisted, “they’re coming from that direction. Y’all heard that big crash. Whoever it was, they shut the fucking door on us. Come on, Chris.”

Perry stepped toward them. “Goddamn it, you get back here. I’m responsible for you!”

“Yo,” Dookie whispered, “do y’all smell that all of the sudden? It’s like something died up in here.”

“You ain’t responsible for shit,” Markus told Perry, turning away from the others and ignoring Dookie’s comment.

Perry started to respond, but he paused. Dookie was right. There was an ammoniacal stench in the air—shit, sulfur, sweat, and worse. Then he noticed that the footsteps had stopped, replaced by the sound of harsh, heavy breathing.

Oblivious to the noise or the stench, Markus and Chris started down the hall. Chris glanced back over his shoulder once. His eyes were haunted and pleading. Then he wrinkled his nose. He turned around, and Perry saw a massive, looming shadow fall over them both. As Perry and the others watched, Chris raised his flashlight. Reflected in the beam was the biggest man Perry had ever seen—if indeed it was a man. He had to be over seven feet tall; his bald, misshapen head brushed against the ceiling as he stood there staring at them. His shoulders and chest were bigger than any professional wrestler Perry had ever watched on television—easily the width of several men. He was almost naked, except for some garbage bags tied together with silver duct tape. His pale skin, while covered with sores and growths, rippled with slabs of thick muscle. Most disturbing was the creature’s genitals, which were obviously swollen and suppurated with some type of infection. Pus dripped from the tip of its penis like water from a leaky spigot.

He’s so big, Perry thought. How could someone so goddamned big just appear out of nowhere like that? I mean, sure, we heard his footsteps, but how did he just pop out of the darkness like this?

Markus leaped back in alarm. Chris had time to stutter in surprise, and then the giant figure raised some sort of crude weapon—a boulder tied onto an iron pipe. The stone was crusted with blood. Without a word, the hulk swung the makeshift club up over his shoulders and down onto the top of Chris’s head. The sound it made was like nothing Perry had ever heard. It sort of reminded him of when he was a kid. He and his friends had dropped a watermelon out the third-story window of an apartment building in North Philly. The sound the melon had made as it splattered across the sidewalk was similar to the sound Chris’s head made as the club smashed through it—but this was wetter. The explosion coated Markus and the walls with blood and brain matter. Bits of Chris’s skull flew across the corridor and were embedded into the wall. The mallet reached his neck and pounded what was left down into his chest. Amazingly, his body remained standing, clutching the flashlight in one jittering hand. The boy’s sphincter and bladder both released, adding to the noxious stench in the passageway.

Perry cried out in horror. Jamal did the same, screaming his friend’s name. Dookie trembled next to Perry, clinging to his arm and babbling nonsensical words. Incredibly, Leo charged forward, shrieking with rage, the crowbar held above his head like a spear. Perry’s senses returned as he saw the boy charge forward. Shoving Dookie behind him, he brought the handgun up and tried to aim. Jamal’s and Dookie’s flashlights were shaking too badly to be of much use, and although Chris’s standing corpse still held his, it was pointed at the floor. Perry did his best to draw a bead despite the bad lighting, but Leo got in his way.

“Leo,” he hollered. “Get the hell out of there!”

If Leo heard him, he didn’t react. Cursing, Perry took a few steps toward them, trying to get a clearer shot. As he did, Markus wiped the blood out of his eyes and stared upward, just as the looming monstrosity swung at him. Markus had enough reflexes to raise the sledgehammer.

The two weapons clashed against each other. The beast grunted in surprise or amusement—Perry couldn’t tell which. Then it shoved Markus off his feet. The boy landed on his back with a jarring thud but managed to hold on to his hammer. The creature stepped over him and faced down Leo.

“Get the hell off him, motherfucker!”

Leo slashed at it with the crowbar. The tool glanced off the hulk’s massive bicep, digging a shallow furrow in the flesh. If the thing felt pain, it gave no indication. It pivoted, swiping at Leo with the hammer, but he danced out of range, narrowly avoiding the bone-crushing strike.

“Goddamn it, Leo,” Perry yelled. “Move aside!”

This time, he did as Perry asked, dropping flat to the floor. The thing in the hallway bellowed laughter and glared at Perry, Dookie, and Jamal, with round black eyes, as if it had just noticed their presence. Grinning, the creature stuck its tongue out at them. The organ looked like a pale, wriggling worm. Its smile grew wider, revealing broken, blackened teeth. Worse was the obscenely large penis dangling between its legs. As they watched, the swollen, infected organ began to dance and bob, spraying more pink and yellow pus. Perry was grateful for the dim lighting. He didn’t think he could take seeing things any more clearly than he already was. The stench wafting from between the man-thing’s legs was nauseating.

The monstrosity laughed again, and Perry pulled the trigger. He hadn’t planned on it, wasn’t even aware that he’d done it until the gun leaped in his hands and the boom filled the room. The brass jacket flew out of the side of the gun and clattered onto the floor. The echo continued, deafening Perry to everything around him. The vibration ran up his forearms. Not waiting to see if he’d hit the giant, he squeezed the trigger again, this time making a conscious effort to aim for the bastard’s chest. His opponent jerked and staggered, but then stood back up as if shrugging it off and raised its hammer high. Blood ran from a dime-sized hole in its chest.

“Jamal? Dookie? You still back there. If so, get those lights on it.”

Perry couldn’t hear whether they responded. His ears were still ringing from the gunshots. But a second later, two jittering flashlight beams crisscrossed the beast. It squinted at the light.

How the hell can it still be standing?

Perry’s eyes grew wide as he saw Markus clambering to his feet behind it. The boy hefted the sledgehammer, eyeing his attacker coldly.

“Yo, turn your bad-cheese-smelling ass around, you skinhead motherfucker.”

“Markus, no!” Perry lowered the gun in frustration as the ringing in his ears faded. “I can’t shoot if you’re behind it.”

The giant spun around and swung its hammer again. Markus raised his to meet the attack. Once more, the two weapons smashed into each other with a loud crash. The head broke off Markus’s hammer and crashed to the floor, narrowly missing his foot. Although Markus had deflected the killing blow, the force once again knocked him to the floor. His attacker’s hammer glanced off the wall, shearing and gouging through plaster and studs. Markus dropped his weapon and scrambled backward across the floor. The giant raised a foot and stomped on his chest. Perry heard a sound like twigs snapping, and then realized it was Markus’s ribs. Blood flew from the hapless boy’s mouth. He made a choking, gagging sound. Perry tried once again to get a clear shot at the madman, but Leo darted between them and struck Markus’s foe on the back of the head with the crowbar. Grunting, the hulk slapped him aside with one free hand. Although Perry could see the blood welling up on its bald scalp, the thing seemed unfazed by Leo’s blow.

“The hell with this.” Perry glanced back at Jamal and Dookie. “Get your asses out of here now! Go back the way we came. Get to the door and see if you can escape.”

Without waiting to see if they’d listen to him, Perry turned around and ran down the hallway toward the battle. Leo was crawling to his feet and searching for his crowbar. He seemed dazed. Markus whimpered in terror and agony as the giant grabbed one of his arms and lifted him off the floor. It let go of the hammer, and the heavy weapon crashed to the floor, stirring up dust and sending vibrations through the boards. Then the bruiser grabbed Markus’s other arm and began to pull them in different directions. Markus shrieked. Still pulling, the creature slammed him into the wall again and again. There was a horrible popping and tearing sound, and then Markus sagged in its grip as one of his arms ripped free. The giant flung him to the floor and then turned to face Perry and Leo. It grinned.

Without pausing to aim, Perry shot it in the face, sheering away part of its chin and cheek. Squealing, the attacker swiped at Perry with Markus’s severed arm, splattering him with the teen’s blood. Perry fired again. The bullet tore through the giant’s shoulder. It paused, swaying back and forth on its tree-trunk legs. Then it surged toward them again. Perry realized that he could see its teeth and tongue through the bullet wound.

Why won’t it fall? he thought. Why the hell won’t it die?

He squeezed the trigger again. The gun jumped in his hand, and the shot went high, cleaving the monster’s bald skull. Behind it, Perry heard Markus gasping for breath. He realized that the teen’s struggles must be very loud indeed if he could hear them over the gunshots. Growling through its ruined mouth, the monstrosity charged, still wielding Markus’s arm like a club.

Perry was suddenly aware of Leo standing beside him.

“Aim high,” the boy shouted, and then dropped to his knees. Before Perry could get off another shot, Leo jammed the crowbar forward, impaling their assailant directly in the middle of his grotesque, infected penis. A rush of foul air blasted from the creature’s lungs. It cupped its ruined groin with both hands, dropping its grisly weapon. Blood and pus gushed from between its sausage-like fingers. Its round, black eyes rolled up into the back of its head, and then, uttering a small, quiet whine, it toppled over backward with the crowbar still jutting from between its legs.

“Get back,” Perry told Leo.

Leo turned aside and threw up.

Perry leaned over the giant and emptied his weapon into its head. Again he was reminded of the exploding watermelons. This time, the image satisfied rather than horrified him. He kept squeezing the trigger, even after the pistol was empty. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. From the neck up, the corpse was nothing more than pink and white chunks, but some small part of him still expected it to sit up or grasp at his ankles. His hands and wrists stung. His ears rang. The air was thick with gun smoke. Empty brass casings littered the floor, glinting in the flashlight beams.

“Damn . . .”

Perry wheeled around, and saw Dookie and Jamal still standing there, staring at the scene in shocked disbelief. Leo retched again, his vomit splattering across the floorboards, mixing with Chris and Markus’s blood. Still trembling, Perry walked over to him and gently put his hand on Leo’s shoulder. They stayed like that, not speaking, until Leo was finished.

“Damn,” Dookie repeated, his voice barely a whisper.

“Check on Markus,” Perry said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “See if he’s still breathing.”

Dookie made a choking noise. “Ain’t no way—”

“Just do it! Please?”

Perry squeezed Leo’s shoulder. The teen turned and looked up at him with tears in his eyes and puke on his lips and chin.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” Leo whispered. “I just . . . Markus was a dick, but he was my boy, too? You know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“And Chris . . . damn, I’ve known Chris since we was in diapers. He can’t be dead. He just can’t.”

Perry turned back to the bodies. Dookie was kneeling next to Markus, staring into his face. Markus stared back at him, unblinking, unmoving.

“Is he dead?” Perry asked.

Dookie nodded.

“What the hell was that thing?” Jamal sobbed. “I mean, what the fuck?”

Nobody answered him.

Perry helped Leo to his feet and then addressed them all.

“Somebody must have heard the gunshots. The cops may not have shown up before, but they’ll have no choice now. I say we go back to the exit, find our way outside again, and wait for them to arrive.”

“What about Markus and Chris?” Leo asked. “We just gonna let them lie here?”

“There’s nothing we can do for them now. This is a crime scene. Best thing for all concerned is to just leave it alone until help arrives.”

Jamal pointed at the mutant’s corpse. “You’re worried the po-po are gonna arrest you for capping him, aren’t you?”

“No,” Perry said. “I’m not. It was self defense. Any fool can see that Chris and Markus were killed by that fucking freak. What I’m worried about is the rest of you. Now let’s go.”

He ushered them back down the hall. Leo stopped, turned and cast a longing, mournful glance back at his friends. Perry grabbed his arm and urged him to follow.

“Ain’t nothing you can do for them now.”

“It’s my fault,” Leo said. “I was the one who insisted we come in here. We should have never gotten involved. Should have minded our own damn business.”

“It’s not your fault,” Perry said. “It’s nobody’s fault, except maybe that big naked fucker’s. Things just happen sometimes. There’s not always a reason or explanation, no matter how bad we want there to be. Now, come on.”

Leo silently pulled the crowbar out of the giant’s back. It came free with a wet squelch.

Perry led them back down the twisting hallway. They’d only gone a few dozen yards when they heard the patter of feet running toward them.

“Get behind me,” Perry said, leaping in front of the teens. “Be ready to run.”

A tall, misshapen form erupted from the shadows and charged down the passageway. Dookie raised his flashlight, shining it directly into the creature’s face. The thing squealed but didn’t slow. Perry stared at the lanky creature as it approached. It was some kind of horribly deformed human. One of its eyes was covered with thick, scabrous scar tissue. Its teeth were sharp and pointed. Its tongue had recently been severed. The raw, red stump flicking around inside its open mouth still leaked blood.

“Fuck me,” Perry groaned.

He raised the handgun and pulled the trigger, remembering too late that he was out of bullets.

“Shit!”

Leo stepped in front of him and struck the mutant with the crowbar. Its nose and teeth crunched under the force of the blow. The thing tumbled to the floor, shrieking. Leo swung again. Then a third time. The monster flung its misshapen hands into the air in a feeble attempt to ward off the blows. The crowbar crashed down again and again.

“Die,” Leo shouted. “Die, you motherfucker. Die, die, die, die . . .”

He chanted it over and over. Even after the thing’s head had burst open. Even after the tip of the crowbar had punched a dozen holes in its body. Even after it lay still. Perry reached out and seized his wrist. Blood dripped from the weapon. Leo glanced at him, eyes blazing. Perry shook his head.

“It’s dead now. You can stop.”

“Can I?” Leo’s voice was barely a whisper. “Can I really, Mr. Watkins? Because I gotta be honest with you. Right now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop again.”

nineteen

They didn’t stop coming. Heather thought for sure that they’d give up, but even with the distance she’d put between them, the nightmares kept chasing after her. Their bizarre, unsettling cries echoed in the darkness.

She felt around the room, trying to remember where the exit had been. She wished now that she hadn’t tossed her lantern at the horde. She was pretty sure the room was still unoccupied. She didn’t hear any breathing, and there was no sour, telltale stench indicating one of the creatures was hiding there. But it wouldn’t be empty for long. She tiptoed forward, trying to remain as quiet as possible, but the discarded papers and photographs rustled beneath her feet. She bumped into the table with her hip, wincing at both the pain and the sudden sound.

Biting her lip, Heather desperately considered her options. Where could she go from here? There were monsters in front of her and monsters behind her, and there seemed little chance that the police or anybody else were going to come down into the tunnels and rescue her or her friends. For a moment, she considered just hunkering down where she was. Just hiding in the darkness and waiting for the inevitable.

While she was thinking this, Heather spotted a light up ahead, coming from the tunnel that led into the larger cave complex and back up to the house. It grew bigger and brighter as she watched, enough that she could make out the room’s interior again.

Oh good, she thought, now I’ll be able to see them clearly before they fucking eat me.

The noises coming from the crevice grew louder. Heather quickly crossed the floor and peeked inside. The tide of in vitro deformities squawked when they saw her and began crawling faster. She ducked back into the room again. The light was closer and brighter still.

She was trapped.

Heather glanced around the room wildly, searching for anything useful. She knocked aside the remaining paperwork and overturned the table in a desperate race to find another weapon. There had to be something, even a fork to go with the butter knife she’d found earlier.

The first of the baby monstrosities tumbled into the room with a wet, squelching sound. Even in the semidarkness, she could see the massive pupils in its watery eyes focusing on her immediately. It had no legs—just two short, stubby arms. Amazingly, the creature balanced on its hands and waddled toward her, mewling like a cat. Heather grabbed one of the old blankets and tossed it over the creature. Its cries increased as it fumbled around beneath the blanket. Heather drew back her bare foot and kicked it. The creature was soft and yielding beneath her toes. She raised her foot and brought her heel down. The baby screamed. She stomped it again and again, feeling tiny bones snap beneath her weight. It squealed and thrashed and then lay still.

In response to its cries, she heard footsteps coming from the direction of the light. The room grew brighter. More of the creature’s brothers and sisters tottered out of the crevice. One by one, they poured into the small room. All of them were deformed. Most should never have lived, yet here they were. Some of the monstrosities were missing limbs. Others had bodies that were so twisted and ruined, she wasn’t sure how they functioned. Their faces were the stuff of nightmares. Some were missing eyes or had too many. Others had gaping holes where their noses should have been and rotted cavities in place of mouths. Each of them was bathed in filth, crusted with vile sludge like pigs that had wallowed in mud and shit. Incredibly, many of them had mold and tiny, pale mushrooms growing in their body’s crevices and crannies.

As if following some silent, communal command, the mutants fanned out, trying to surround her. Terrified and disgusted, Heather picked up the half-rotten table and flung it at them. The furniture exploded, slamming into a tightly clustered knot of the things and shattering, spraying both shards of wood and splatters of blood. The babies screamed. Down the tunnel, the light grew brighter still, and the footsteps increased their pace, running now.

“Goddamn it! You leave those young ones alone, bitch.”

Heather recognized the voice immediately. It was the same one who had confronted her earlier, in the darkness. The one who had boasted of taking Brett’s belt from Javier. As if to confirm her suspicions, she heard the belt crack as the light drew closer.

She had to move fast. If she delayed any longer, they’d trap her here, inside this grotto. Heather didn’t want that to happen. If she had to die tonight, she didn’t want it to be at the hands of these hideous, infantile freaks. Better to bash her own head against the cave walls until she lost consciousness. She needed to find a way out. For a second, she considered retracing her steps and going back up into the house, but she decided against it. The house was the hunting ground for these things—or more accurately, for the adults. Even if it was deserted now, there was no telling how many more traps lay in wait up there, and there was no guarantee that she’d be able to find an exit that wasn’t blockaded. No, her best bet was finding another way out of the tunnels. There had to be other entrances and exits, because otherwise, the things would have starved a long time ago. They couldn’t possibly live on just what prey came into the house.

“Hey, woman, do you hear me? Just give up now. I’ll be quick. Bleed you before you even know what happened. You’re only making it worse on yourself!”

The voice was closer. Clearer now. Less echo and distortion, but still as terrible as before.

Making it worse, Heather thought. How could it get any worse? Her friends were probably all dead, and she was trapped beneath the streets of Philadelphia with a bunch of inbred mutant freaks.

The infants recovered from her attack and began to regroup. Their frantic, mewling cries increased. The belt cracked again, echoing down the corridor. Heather darted forward and grabbed a splintered table leg, momentarily placing herself within striking distance. Several of the more daring creatures swiped and spat at her, hissing with rage. The smell wafting off them was enough to make her eyes sting and water.

She swung the table leg and sprang backward, halting their advance. The light grew even brighter—close enough now that she could make out the circular beam of a flashlight and the shadowy figure behind it.

There had to be a way out. That was what mattered. All the freaks and monsters and filth and death and stench in this place wouldn’t matter if she made it to the other end and escaped. Heather kept telling herself that as she gagged at the stench in the air and eyed her attackers. The rejects and nightmares hopped, flopped, and sputtered as they tried to surround her again.

One of them—an emaciated thing with pasty skin between patches of filth and clay, bulging eyes and bared, oversized, yellowed teeth—charged at her, reaching with both skeletal hands. Screaming, Heather swung with her club. The table leg connected with moist skin, making a squelching sound that reminded Heather of a shoe sinking into mud. The thing grunted and then screamed, the long, bony fingers of its hands grasping at her ankle before Heather could pull back.

The cold, tiny fingers were unnaturally strong, and before she knew what was happening, the monster was upon her. Powerful hands gripped her leg and the dead white face of the thing lunged forward, the oversized teeth clamping down on her ankle and biting savagely, cutting through the denim of her jeans and into her skin. Teeth scraped over bone and peeled away flesh. Heather groaned as pain coursed up her leg. She swung the club, smashing it against the monster’s back and shoulder. She half expected the rotten wood to fall apart in her hands, but instead, it held solid, thrumming with the force of her blows. Each strike delivered ugly purple and red welts on the creature’s pasty white skin. It released her leg and hopped back, shrieking and batting at the air. Heather hissed in delight as it writhed in obvious pain. The rest of the swarm, which had been preparing to charge, now held back. Heather could see the caution and uncertainty in their eyes.

All of that vanished a second later as the figure with the flashlight entered the room.

“Oh my God . . .”

The figure smiled. “Like my suit, do you? Think it’s pretty? Go on, take a good look. You’re going to be my new Sunday dress.”

The figure wore a dead woman’s skin over its body. Crude, black stitches ran up the legs and abdomen, encircling the waist and neck. The flat breasts hung low. The skin was smooth and shiny, and pulled taut across the maniac’s chest and arms. She could see his own muscles rippling and bulging beneath the second skin. Perhaps most shocking was the killer’s groin. His penis jutted from the folds of the dead, tanned vagina, fully erect. She glanced back up at his face and saw him lick his lips as he appraised her.

“It’s more than a suit,” he whispered. “It’s me. It’s my skin. My second skin.”

“Scug,” Heather said, recalling his name from their earlier meeting.

“Yeah,” the killer said. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

He laughed, and Heather stepped sideways, favoring her injured leg. Immediately, the other mutants began to growl. She froze.

“You’ll make a fine new addition to my wardrobe,” Scug said. “But enough pussyfooting around. Might as well get to work, right? Let’s get this over with. I’ve got lots to do tonight, and you and your friends have already got me off schedule.”

His tone was matter-of-fact, his gravely voice almost bored. His eyes flicked to the table leg in her hand, and he laughed. Then, moving quickly, he lashed out at her with the belt. It cracked toward her. Heather felt the breeze from its passage as it narrowly missed her cheek. She managed to avoid the blow, darting to the side, but she stumbled and lost her footing. She fell to her knees, wincing in pain as the rough stone floor dug into her flesh. Scug lunged toward her, still cackling with laughter. Without thinking, Heather reached out with one hand, grabbed one of the smaller infants by the arm and stumbled to her feet. She swung the squalling baby, smacking Scug in the side of the head with the flailing infant. Both adult and baby tumbled to the floor. Scug stirred. The baby did not.

Heather ran for the exit. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain flaring in her ankle.

Behind her, Scug and the other mutants went berserk. They shrieked their anger, bellowing and lashing out wildly, slamming fists, flippers and stumps against the grotto’s walls and staggering about in fury.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Scug bellowed. “Oh, you are going to hurt for that!”

One of the creatures slithered in front of Heather, blocking her escape. It had crude, bony flippers instead of legs, and its arms seemed more like tentacles than anything useful. She wheeled around, searching for an opening. Howling with rage, Scug threw the flashlight at her.

It smashed against the wall, plunging the room into darkness again. Heather was facing the crevice when the blackness returned. Swallowing hard, she ran straight ahead, plunging blindly, arms outstretched in front of her.

“You bitch,” Scug yelled. “You scraggly little bitch! I’m gonna knife-fuck you. I’ll pull out your intestines and stick my dick in them. I’ll pop out your eyeballs and fuck the sockets.”

Heather’s bare foot came down hard on one of the babies. She slipped but maintained her balance. Something warm and wet squished between her toes. The infant wailed, thrashing beneath her foot. She stepped over it and limped on.

“Stop it,” Scug shouted. “Leave them alone! I swear to Ob, when I get my fucking hands on you, I’m going to give you to Noigel and let him do what he does best.”

Heather didn’t know who Ob was, or what Noigel’s specialty might be, and she didn’t care. She didn’t intend to stick around long enough to find out. Her fingers brushed against the wall. She groped around, found the crevice, and plunged into it. Behind her, the sounds of fury reached a deafening level. Heather scrabbled back up the slope, ignoring the sharp rocks beneath her hands and feet. She kept low, so that she wouldn’t bump her head on the low ceiling. When her knee came down on a shard of broken glass from her lantern, she barely winced. Panic and adrenaline drove her onward.

She estimated that she’d reached the point where she’d first encountered the infant hordes before pausing to listen for pursuit. Sure enough, they were following. Scug was in the lead, judging by the sound. Heather scurried on, crawling through the darkness, not knowing what lay ahead, nor bothering to consider it.

The stench grew worse. Whatever it was that the baby freaks had been crawling around in, the source lay up ahead. Heather breathed through her mouth and refused to stop. Her entire body trembled, and now the pain started to creep in. She ignored it and gritted her teeth.

Her pursuers had grown quiet, but she could still hear them back there, relentless in their goal. They crawled and slithered without speaking. All she heard now were fingernails and claws on stone. She felt a breeze on her face, and when she patted the tunnel walls, she got the perception that it was widening again. Heather tried standing. While she couldn’t straighten up to her full height, she managed to get into a sort of crouch. Her shoulders and back brushed against the ceiling. Ducking down a little bit more, she continued on until the passage broadened even more. Then she stood and stretched.

Heather paused. The stench grew more powerful. She could no longer hear the sounds of pursuit behind her, but Heather had no doubt that Scug and his minions were still there, creeping stealthily forward in the dark, intent on sneaking up and catching her unawares. Her only chance was to keep moving forward. Still, she hesitated, scared of what lay ahead. She was hoping for a way out, yes, but not one that led even deeper into the darkness. What if the blackness grew so dense and so complete that it snuffed her out? What if she simply ceased to exist?

I’m losing it. The darkness isn’t a living thing. Keep moving, Heather. You owe it to Javier and the others. Go, damn it. Just go!

She shuffled forward, her body aching with every hesitant step. Her feet came down on something soft. Frowning, Heather knelt on the cavern floor and reached out experimentally. The material felt like a mix of newspaper strips, scraps of cloth, and fiberglass insulation. When Heather had been younger, she’d owned two hamsters named Tweedle-Dee and Totally-Dumb. The bedding in the bottom of their cage had consisted of newspaper scraps and pine shavings. This reminded her of that.

The stench was at its strongest here, but so was the breeze. Both washed over her, seeming to cling to her body. Heather coughed, unable to control the urge any longer. She froze, listening for any sign that she’d given her position away, but the tunnel remained silent behind her. Heather started to wonder if maybe she was wrong. Maybe Scug and the others had given up. Or maybe they were waiting. Maybe this was a dead end and they knew she’d have to come back.

She coughed again, gagging. It occurred to her that if she dropped lower, perhaps the nauseating odor wouldn’t be as bad. After all, wasn’t that what firemen said to do during a fire? If you dropped to the ground, the smoke couldn’t reach you, because it climbed higher. Maybe the same thing would work in this situation. Anything was better than kneeling here and breathing it in. She could taste the reek in the back of her throat—oily and sour.

She hunkered down on her hands and knees and crawled forward. The material on the floor rustled beneath her, but Heather pressed onward, deciding that it was too late to change course. Her eyes still watered and stung, and her throat still felt coated, but the stench seemed more tolerable at ground level. Heather didn’t know if it was her imagination or not. Then her hand came down on something hard and cylindrical. Cold metal. A flashlight!

Oh please let there be batteries in it. Oh please oh please oh please . . .

She debated whether to try it. If her pursuers were still there, the flashlight would undoubtedly lead them right to her. On the other hand, if they weren’t, having some visibility would help her escape that much quicker.

If it even works. Don’t know until I try it.

Holding her breath, Heather found the button on the side of the flashlight and pressed it. She almost passed out when the light came on. It was weak, but compared to the utter blackness she’d found herself in a moment before, the beam flooded the space with dazzling brilliance. Spots floated in front of Heather’s eyes. She closed them for a moment and then opened them again, squinting and letting them adjust. When she could see again, she looked around.

She was in a large, round chamber, with tunnel openings on each end. The floor was indeed piled high with bedding—shredded newspapers and magazines, strips of old blankets, sheets and clothing, rolls of fiberglass insulation, and other soft material. Heather felt a bizarre surge of pride that she’d been able to identify the assortment just by touch. Scattered among the litter were old, broken toys—a dump truck missing a wheel, a doll with stuffing leaking from its seams, wooden blocks covered with mold.

With dawning horror, Heather realized that she was standing in some obscene nursery.

She climbed to her feet and hurried onward, stumbling for the exit. The smell was like a wall, but she no longer cared. She put her head down, breathed through her mouth, and forced herself to keep going.

She left the nursery and continued on. The passageway was short—more of an alcove than an actual tunnel. It opened into an even larger chamber. She stopped and shined the flashlight around. The landscape became clearer, but no less unsettling. There were heaps of refuse in front of her, islands of filth and ruined furniture, as well as broken, waterlogged lumber, rusted tin cans, glass bottles, scraps of cloth, and what looked like leather. None of it was new. Most of the debris was decrepit with age and rotten to the point of being almost unrecognizable. All of it stood in water deep enough to hide the floor below. Heather fanned her nose. The water was the worst—more sludge than liquid. She shined the flashlight across it and saw faint discolored rainbows of stagnated pollution and lumps of feces. Then she noticed something else.

Bones.

The water was full of human remains—all of them skeletal and picked clean, none of them complete. A shattered femur here. A broken rib cage there. A splintered half-skull grinning at her from the muck.

Heather stifled a scream and trained the beam of light on the reeking mounds of garbage. To her surprise, the piles were honeycombed with holes—manufactured caves. They were igloo-like structures made of refuse and filth, lined with old newspapers and scraps of other debris. Deep within those black hidey-holes, shapes began to stir, clearly disturbed by her sudden intrusion.

At one time in her life, Heather had planned on becoming a veterinarian. That dream had faded in quick succession when she decided to become a nurse, a hairdresser, and then a lawyer, before ultimately admitting that she had no clue what she wanted to be when she graduated—not that the admission had stopped her parents and the school guidance counselor. But during the brief time that she’d considered a career in veterinary services, Heather had watched every nature show she could find on television and absorbed every detail. There had been certain rules among the animals, and thinking of those rules while looking into the vile warren in front of her, she understood that the rules of nature had not merely been broken, but discarded completely.

Nature took care of certain things. In the wild, if a malformed cub was born to wolves or bears, it was most likely immediately put to death as a mercy, because life was not kind and certainly did not favor the weak. As the creatures emerged from their dens, Heather understood at last what she’d walked into. The things she had seen before, the ones that had killed her friends and chased them through the house and the caverns, and even the mutated infants from the previous tunnel—all of those had been healthy. Deformed, obviously, but healthy. The creatures that lived here in this festering pit were the things that nature would have killed in the wild. These were the children that could not fend for themselves, the rejects and the weaklings. The mutant mutants. But for whatever reason, they had not been killed.

Heather looked at the squalor around her, caught the scent of rotting filth and decay, glanced down at the bones, and felt a chill work through her whole body.

Not killed. They had been thrown away instead.

Discarded like trash, rather than living beings.

Left to their own devices. Maybe occasionally thrown some scraps of food—or maybe the skeletons just belonged to someone like herself, unlucky enough to escape the house and the caverns unscathed, but then stumble into this part.

The chamber before this one had been a nursery. This place was an orphanage—or a garbage dump. Or both.

Somewhere to her right, one of the castoffs mewled and dropped into the water with a loud splash. She missed its dive but spotted the ripples that radiated from the point of impact.

“You better stay the hell over there if you don’t want to get the crap beat out of you.”

Her shaky voice echoed around the chamber. The things living in the heaps and slithering through the sludge made reciprocal noises. She let her eyes roam around the pit, searching the garbage for anything useful, but saw nothing that she could use. There were ripples spreading out from several places in the water now, and tiny, shadowy forms moved beneath the surface. Her feet were at the very edge of the foul muck, and Heather stepped back, unsettled.

“I mean it,” she shouted. “Keep the hell away from me!”

Again, her voice echoed, and again, the things responded with more whines and chirps. Something rustled above her. Heather glanced upward, shining the light toward the ceiling. She couldn’t see it. It was too high, and the flashlight didn’t penetrate the shadows. The rustling sound was repeated. Dirt fell from above and drifted down, landing in Heather’s eye and bouncing off her cheek. She flinched at the unexpected pain and closed her eye against the irritation. Her eye stung and watered, and she had to resist the urge to put down her flashlight and rub it.

A moment later a larger amount of dirt pattered across the top of her head. Blinking, Heather looked up—

—just as something dropped out of the shadows and landed on her upturned face.

It was about the size of a groundhog and had scaly skin and sharp teeth and claws, but beyond that she had no time to see it clearly before it was upon her. Tiny claws dug into her cheeks and neck, clinging tightly. Tiny, needlelike teeth chomped into her nose. The sudden weight and pain hit her hard and drove Heather to her knees. The flashlight slipped from her grip and rolled toward the murky waters. She grabbed the small creature and tried to pull it off, but its teeth and claws sank deeper. Blinded, Heather stumbled to her feet and beat at the clutching, smothering beast. Too late, she realized she was teetering at the edge of the water. One foot dangled in empty space, and then she fell.

The water was deeper than she’d suspected. She plunged beneath the surface. As the oily sludge covered her head, Heather’s attacker dislodged itself from her face and swam away. She opened her eyes and saw only darkness. Then she remembered what that darkness consisted of—feces and sludge and other nastiness. She clenched her eyes shut again. The taste of raw sewage filled Heather’s mouth and sinuses as she instinctively tried to inhale. Her lungs burned. Her pounding head felt like it would explode. In the blackness, jagged, unseen debris poked her skin and clothes.

Heather kicked for the surface, assuming that it couldn’t be that far above her. Before she could reach it, though, another small hand pressed down on the back of her skull and shoved her farther into the depths. A desperate heat bloomed in Heather’s chest as her oxygen faded and the urge to breathe moved toward desperate. She pushed with her hands, trying to dislodge the thing and failing. It moved above her and then lowered its face onto her scalp. She felt scaly skin and sharp teeth against her head. Heather opened her eyes. The creature tugged her hair and slipped its mouth lower, inching toward her neck, as if it was trying to decide where to kiss her. Heather flailed as she tried again to knock it free. This time she only partially succeeded. The body shifted, but it still clutched her hair.

Something else in the water scraped painfully across her rib cage and the side of her breast. Heather bucked again and twisted her arm behind her back, aiming to hit the thing with her elbow, but the angle was impossible. All she did was strain the muscles in her shoulder and back. But the effort must have frightened the creature, because it suddenly released her hair. She felt the black water surge as it moved. Then something bit into the meat of her other shoulder, drawing blood.

Heather opened her mouth to scream, losing what little air she had in her lungs in the process. More of the foul sludge poured into her throat as she tried to inhale. Violent shudders racked her body. Her head pounded and her ears rang as the vile waters filled her mouth.

Heather fought more frantically, using the last of her strength. The teeth that had ripped into her shoulder came free as she turned and pushed and punched madly, desperate to live, regardless of the agony or damage her struggles caused.

The thing vanished, and Heather’s head broke the surface. At first, she couldn’t see anything. Gasping for breath, she wiped the sewage from her eyes and her vision returned. Her flashlight still lay at the water’s edge. She kicked toward it. Nearby, a small figure glided through the water with decidedly sinuous grace.

“No . . .” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.

Retching, she trailed her hands through the sludge, feeling it push between her fingers as she searched for something to defend herself with. This time, she got lucky. Her left hand caught a hard object, slicked with filth, but heavy. A feral grin split her face at that moment.

The sound of her own laughter shocked her. She pulled the object out of the water, ignoring the reek of sewage that permeated the air and waited for her opponent. She glanced around, searching for it in the dim light. The sound of water shifting was her only warning.

Heather held tight to her weapon and slid her other hand along the uneven shaft, ignoring the odd slippery spots as she cocked the club back.

Three heartbeats, and the splashing sounds were closer.

Two, and she could feel the water surge around her as the abomination approached.

One, and she put her weight behind the swing, listened to the sound of whistling air and then the satisfying crack of her weapon against flesh and bone. The impact ran up her hands, and then her wrists and forearms before terminating in her shoulders. Her breasts swayed and heaved with the effort.

The mutant yelped in a high and jittery voice. She brought her club down again in a hard, violent arc. The impact numbed her hands and left her fingers throbbing in counterpoint. Sludge and sewage splashed her arms and face. Then something else sprayed, as well. Heather pulled back and felt the splatter of warm blood rise with her weapon, felt it christen her face in a baptism of blood and shit. She screamed her anger into the darkness, and listened to her voice echo as she shook with adrenaline and rage.

The next thing that attacked her swam in low and struck her hip. She bobbed beneath the surface for a moment before surging up again. Heather brought the club down in a hard thrust, striking a solid blow against the new opponent. Despite her attack, the thing wrapped a long, thin arm around her ass, and she felt spidery fingers clawing at her jeans underwater. Heather screamed again and prodded at the off ending limb with her weapon until it withdrew. She swung again at where she thought the rest of the thing might be, but missed completely. The creature broke off the attack. Heather heard it swimming away.

Turning again, she focused on the shore as she coughed and forced herself to take deep breaths, eagerly taking in oxygen and expelling the vile taste of filth. Her lungs felt like they’d been splashed with acid, and her muscles felt like they had been replaced with live wires that shook and jittered but refused to work properly. Her face hovered barely an inch above the surface as she continued coughing and did her best to reach the edge. She grasped at the hard stone surface. For one panicked moment, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to pull herself out of the pit, but then she heard more mewling cries and splashes. The noises were coming from all over the place, too many directions for her to even guess at their location. Spurred on by fear, she pushed herself up on her hands and pulled her lower half free of the muck. Then she collapsed, turned her head to the side, and vomited. Wet sludge dripped and ran from her body, pooling around her. The stench was incredible.

In the waters behind her, the sounds of activity increased again. Heather vomited again and then sat up, wiping her mouth and reaching for the flashlight. She shined it out over the pit and saw the waters churning. She grimaced in understanding. The mutant offspring were no longer interested in her. They were eating their brothers and sisters—the ones she had killed or injured. Heather smiled at the realization.

Good, she thought, let them eat each other instead of me.

She watched them feast and retched a few more times. Then, satisfied that she’d live for at least the time being, Heather turned to search for a way out.

She collided with Scug, who was standing silently behind her.

“Bitch,” he spat, slapping her face with the back of his hand. “I should have known I’d find you down here with all the other trash.”

Heather didn’t utter a sound as she swung the flashlight around and smashed him in the side of the head. Grunting, Scug stumbled backward, swaying on his feet.

“No more, you fucker,” she said, her voice low and predatory. “No more of this shit. It’s my turn now. My turn!”

She struck him again, rocking his head back even harder. The air rushed from his lungs. Scug swayed more. For a second, she thought he might fall, but he maintained his balance. Heather darted in for a third blow, but Scug straightened up, rubbed the side of his head and stared at her, grinning. She faltered, halting in midswing.

“You think so?” he asked.

Heather felt her anger waver. Doubt crept back in. Her fear bloomed anew.

Scug’s smile grew larger. “Do you really think so?”

“I m-mean it,” she stammered. “Stay the fuck away from me, you sick freak.”

“Come on, girlie. Give it your best shot.”

Screaming, Heather charged. Rather than dodging or trying to block her attack, Scug met it head-on, stepping toward her. He caught her swing with one hand. His other arm grabbed her left breast and squeezed. Heather’s enraged cry turned into a shriek of pain. Still twisting her breast, Scug wrenched her arm downward and twisted it at the same time. The flashlight slipped from Heather’s grip and clattered onto the floor. The lens shattered, and the flashlight rolled away, plunging into the water.

Scug hissed. His foul breath was hot and humid on her face. His fingernails dug into her wrist and through her shirt into the meat of her breast as he squeezed harder, forcing her down to her knees until she was eye-level with the horrid penis sticking out of the leathery vagina he wore at his waist.

“You’re not good enough for a new suit of clothes,” he spat. “You’re no good for anything. You’re just another piece of garbage, washed down to us from above. You’re trash.”

“Please,” Heather pleaded. “Please please please please . . .”

Scug laughed, his face hidden in shadow. “You gonna beg now? You gonna offer to suck my dick or something if I promise not to kill you?”

Heather choked out a sob, unable to respond. Scug’s penis twitched, coming to life.

“Is that what you’re gonna do? You gonna beg for it?”

Behind her, Heather heard a great commotion in the water—splashing and a chorus of tiny, hungry voices. Her thoughts turned to Javier and the rest of her friends. She wondered where they were now, and if any of them were still alive.

“Well, guess what?” Scug let go of her breast and grabbed a fistful of her hair. He jerked it hard, and Heather screamed again. “I wouldn’t let you put your mouth on me. What do you think of that? You’re not good enough for it. Not good enough to eat. Not good enough to wear. Like I said, you’re just another piece of garbage from up above. And down here, we throw our garbage away.”

“No . . .”

“Yes. I bet your boyfriend tastes better, anyway. He’s a fighter. I’ll eat his heart first and gain his strength.”

Laughing, he dragged her by her hair to the edge of the pit. Heather twisted and fought and clawed, but Scug refused to let go of her hair or her arm. Her feet kicked the ground, but to no avail. Scug grunted with effort and Heather felt herself falling. One moment, there was hard stone underneath her. The next, she splashed into the noxious pool again. She had the presence of mind to gasp a lungful of air before she sank beneath the surface, but that was all.

No, she thought. I’m not dying this way. Not after all I’ve been through. Fuck that. No way.

The waters fairly teemed with activity. Heather felt them churning all around her as she kicked for the surface again. Her foot struck something hard that rolled and twisted under her heel. For a moment, she thought it might be her flashlight, but then she realized that it was too large for that.

Flashlights didn’t have tails.

The tail was thick and long, and reminded her of a tentacle. It whipped up fast and slapped into her thigh with enough force to break her femur. The pain was worse than anything she had ever experienced in her life. Meat and bone were sheared away. The appendage tore through her arteries and nerves.

Heather sank fast and hard. She stared upward, hoping to see light, but all she saw was blackness. The shadows beneath the surface were too dense for her to be able to make out her attacker. All she could see clearly was a small shape with a large tail, rocketing toward her. More of the mutant babies swam behind it, all closing in on her position.

She instinctively threw up a hand to block the attack, and the tail sliced through her arm, severing it halfway between her elbow and wrist. Heather stared at the stump. Blood flowed slowly from the wound, clouding the water like ink. The tail came down again and shattered her sternum, chopping into her chest. One of her breasts floated, attached only by strands of gristle and flesh. Then it was torn free of her body by dozens of eager little hands.

Not going to die like this. I refuse, goddamn it! This isn’t how I’m supposed to die. It’s not fair. I’ve got stuff to do. This just doesn’t make sense . . .

She looked to the surface again, hoping to see the light one last time, hoping to see Javier coming to save her. Hoping to see her parents. Her siblings. Her friends. God.

Instead she saw the tail lashing toward her face.

Then the darkness enveloped her, and Heather saw no more.

twenty

Javier closed his eyes. Not because he wanted to, but because the adrenaline surge that had fueled him ever since his escape from his captors had now left him, leaving him weak and shaking. Blood loss, shock, and fatigue had all finally caught up with him. He knew that if he was going to find the others and make it out of here alive, then he needed to rest, if only for a moment. His stomach growled. He was hungry. It seemed absurd after everything that had happened, but it was true.

A soft breeze blew across his face, coming from somewhere to his left. It reminded him for a moment of how he’d felt as a child when his mother’s breath whispered over his skin as she sang him lullabies. He realized now just how precious those memories were, those odd little sensory recollections that made up the sum of his existence. They were what it meant to be alive. If he died tonight, those memories would cease to exist. Javier had no intention of allowing that to happen. He stayed where he was, crouched against a large boulder, not wanting to continue on just yet, not wanting to forget his mother because as long as he remembered her, he couldn’t die.

He opened his eyes as another breeze dried the sweat on his forehead and cheeks. It had a different scent—not the stench of the mutants or the reek of sewage. This was something else. Something he couldn’t identify. It was not unpleasant. He thought of some of his other favorite smells—gasoline and Heather’s perfume and the potpourri his mother had all around the house and the charbroiled aroma that always seemed to drift out of Burger King restaurants. His stomach growled again. God, he was hungry.

So were his opponents. He needed to get moving again.

He wondered how they had managed to live for so long down here. What else did they eat? Rats? Bugs? Did they hold captives in pens like livestock? Or worse, force their prisoners to breed and then eat the offspring like some perverted form of lamb chops? Human veal? How did the creatures subsist? They couldn’t have survived just on people who blundered into the trap above. Not everyone was foolish enough to run into a condemned house and offer up his friends as a fucking buffet.

That was Tyler’s fault, he thought. And then, No. No it wasn’t. Not really. It was my fault. They’re dead because of me. I led them in here. I couldn’t protect them. I got them killed.

How could he have been so careless? So callous?

Realizing what was happening, Javier pushed away the thoughts. He did not have time for self-loathing. The recriminations and guilt could come later. If he was going to escape this place, he had to get his head back in the game. He needed to stay psyched. He checked himself over, making sure that the cuts on his wrists were still clotted and not bleeding. He was satisfied with what he saw. He still needed medical attention, but he wouldn’t bleed out. His swollen lip had stopped bleeding, too. He’d live.

But for how long?

Javier rose carefully from his spot behind the boulder and moved slowly toward the soft breeze. The air was mostly still, and the breeze was easily lost if he moved too quickly. He assumed it might lead to a way out. He needed to know. If so, then he’d have two choices—escape and go for help, or plunge deeper into the catacombs, find Heather, Kerri, and Brett, and then, with the girls and Brett in tow, hope to hell he could find the exit again and get them all to safety. But what if they were still all split up? Or what if one of them had been captured? That would make things even more difficult.

The unidentifiable smell grew stronger, as did the breeze. He felt around in the darkness and soon discovered a new passageway. It was carefully concealed, a simple wooden door that slotted into runners. The handiwork was the same as in the house above. Further exploration with his fingertips told him that the door had been covered with mud to help conceal it. The breeze was drifting out of a gap at the top.

What’s behind door number one, he wondered. Their warren? Pens for their prisoners? The subway, maybe, or some stairs to the surface?

There was only one way to find out. Working as quietly as possible, Javier pushed. The door slid into its recess to the right. The faint breeze grew much stronger, nearly blasting out of the open space. The mysterious scent became more obvious. There was water nearby, and judging by the strength of the smell, a great deal of it. Not chlorinated, processed water, but an earthy, more primordial aroma, the way a lake smelled when you got close to it. That was exactly what it reminded him of. Brett’s father had once taken Javier, Brett, and Tyler on a weekend fishing trip to Raystown Lake. It had smelled just like this. He wondered what lay up ahead. Runoff from the Delaware, perhaps, or even from the sewers—trickling down into the caverns and condensing, forming an underground pond or lake. If so, what might be lurking around that watering hole? Still, he had to go somewhere. He couldn’t just stand here in the dark and wait for Scug or one of the others to find him. There were the girls to think about.

And his own survival.

Javier stepped through the threshold and slid the door closed behind him. He shuffled along the corridor for a few minutes, the fingers of one hand trailing along the wall. He heard the sound of running water, faint but distinct. Then he paused, staring with his mouth agape. He squinted in disbelief. There was a light up ahead, weak and wavering, but there just the same. He approached it cautiously, and with each step, his surroundings became clearer.

Unlike the previous area, this section was obviously manmade. He was in a wide concrete access corridor that opened into an even larger sewer tunnel. He approached the opening and stared. A thin river of water ran along the curved bottom of the larger tunnel. He was surprised by the strength of the flow. It moved swiftly, surging out of sight into the shadows at the end of the tunnel, yet, despite its speed, the river flowed quietly, almost whispering. Javier licked his parched lips and considered drinking from it. He was so thirsty.

He knelt by the river and cupped the water in his hands, sniffing it experimentally. It looked okay. Then he saw the tiny, almost invisible tadpoles squirming in it. They reminded him of sperm. Thirsty as he was, Javier had no intention of consuming tadpoles. He had no idea what they were, but guessed that they were parasites of some kind. Last thing he needed was a family of them swimming around in his intestines. Choking in disgust, he emptied his hands and wiped them on his pants. His thirst was momentarily forgotten.

Javier turned his gaze upward, searching for the source of the light, and gasped again. There were several crude dwellings above the river, each built into the upper curve of the massive concrete tunnel, pushed out from the edges like giant wasp nests, suspended over the water and clustered together with little apparent care. They were fashioned from mud and wood and other debris. He stared at the structures with a mixed sense of dread and wonder. They didn’t look like they could possibly be secure in their positions, and yet they were. Above the huts were seemingly endless strings of Christmas lights. Some of them blinked and twinkled. Others burned steadily, almost ominously. They ran through the walls of the hovels and were strung over various pipes and conduits. There were also several yellowed lights that had probably been placed by the sewer system’s original builders, but only a few of them still functioned and the light they gave off was feeble at best.

Javier shook his head and stepped back a pace, crouching in the shadows. There might be a way out through the sewer tunnel, but could he risk being seen by whatever might be inside the huts suspended above him?

Do I really have a choice?

He glanced back up the tunnel to the point high above where the water washed down into the area from a hole in the wall. The pipes leading up to the hole were too steep for him to climb, and covered with slime and fungus. No way could he scale them. Even if he could manage to get to the top without slipping, the hole’s opening was too small for him to fit through. Javier shuddered, imagining getting stuck in the fissure, waiting for Scug, Noigel, and the other cannibals to show up and gnaw on his legs. It was possible that Kerri or Heather could fit through the opening, but even then, there was the problem of actually reaching it without falling.

He turned in the other direction and watched the river disappear into the shadows. The tunnel was dark down there. He wondered if the creatures had removed the lights on purpose, or if they’d simply burned out over time. The water had to go somewhere, true enough, but there was no promise that it was an actual escape route. What if the river plunged further into the bowels of the earth, or what if it deposited him right into the hands of more of these things, or into some kind of sewage tank?

“Damn it.”

Javier eyed the nests. If they were occupied, their inhabitants must be sleeping or oblivious to his presence. He decided to search for the girls, bring them back to this location, and then try the river. It wasn’t very deep and looked easy enough to navigate. If it led them somewhere they didn’t want to go, they could always wade out.

Above him, something coughed. He ducked into the shadows and watched as a shape stepped from the opening of a suspended hovel. Javier caught a quick glimpse of filthy skin, and then the creature vanished back inside. He froze, his muscles tensed, wondering if the thing had seen him. If so, it gave no indication. There was no cry of alarm. No horde of mutants came charging forward. Breathing a sigh of relief, Javier turned and started back into the depths of the maintenance corridor, heading back the way he had come. Something squeaked in the darkness. He jumped. A small, furry form scurried along in front of him. Relief washed over him. It was just a rat. Javier grinned. His stomach growled again.

“You better get out of here, dude. If they don’t eat you, I just might.”

As if in response, the rat paused, turned its head toward him, and stood up on its hind legs. It batted its forepaws at him, baring its teeth. The animal’s eyes glittered in the darkness.

“Go on,” Javier said. “Scat!”

He stomped his foot. Instead of running, the rat charged him. Before he could move, it had sunk its teeth into his shoe. Shouting, Javier kicked it into the air. It slammed into the wall, slid to the floor, and then sprang up and ran away. Javier stood there, panting. Too late, he realized that his cry was echoing down the tunnel.

Then the echoes were answered by other cries. Behind him, a chorus of howls and screeches erupted from the nests.

“Oh, shit!”

Javier moved faster, not running—he didn’t want his footfalls to give his exact location away—but jogging back toward the door. He slid it open, hurried back into the cavern, and then shut the door behind him, muffling the onrushing creatures’ frantic cries. The sounds still carried, though, echoing down the corridor behind the door. Javier plunged into the darkness, arms outstretched in front of him, wondering once more how the hell he was going to find the girls and Brett under such conditions. How large was the network of basements, caverns and tunnels? How deep into the earth did they go? How far did they travel? Was it possible that he could run far enough to wind up under his home back in East Petersburg without ever surfacing?

“Shit, shit, shit . . .”

Tight bands of fear cinched around his chest and for a brief moment, Javier thought he might be having a heart attack. He stopped, bent over, and took deep breaths until the feeling had passed. Then he straightened up again and quickly took stock of his environment. Even though it was dark, he knew which direction he’d come from and where he could go, at least to a limited extent. He knew there were probably more hidden passages out there. There could be any number of camouflaged entrances to other tunnels and other nightmares. Each step in a new direction increased his chances of stumbling across one and encountering whatever lurked inside. But if he was going to succeed in finding Heather, Kerri, and Brett, then he had to risk it. They weren’t in any of the places he’d already checked.

And there were things in here with him. Maybe human, maybe not. He wasn’t sure anymore. But they ate humans, whatever they were.

For a brief moment, he considered just forgetting about Heather and the others, and getting out while he still could. The thought shamed him.

He heard the door creak open from somewhere behind him, followed by the soft, whispered patter of feet as his pursuers poured into the cave. He wondered how many there were. It was impossible to tell by sound. None of them spoke. Their cries had ceased the moment they entered the darkness.

Holding his breath, Javier tiptoed forward. He thought about his mother. He thought about Heather. About Kerri. About Brett and Tyler and all their other friends. He thought of his teachers and the girl he’d kissed in summer camp when he was eleven and the guy he’d punched in the nose during fourth grade. He thought of everyone he’d ever known, everyone who had ever impacted his life for good or for bad. Everyone who mattered, convincing himself once again that as long as he remembered them, he wouldn’t die, because then their memories would die with him. When that didn’t work anymore, his thoughts returned to Heather. He focused on her. Summoned her in his mind, saw her face, her smile, the scattering of freckles across her nose, and felt his resolve return. He needed to find her, keep her safe. He used the goal to protect himself from the panic and fear that chewed on his mind and heart.

Javier took four more paces and then heard them coming, spreading out all around him. It sounded like there were a lot of them. He heard claws on stone, the rustle of hair, snorted grunts and whispered sighs. Something panted nearby, close enough that he could feel its breath on his back. He stopped in midstride and held completely still. He knew that if he remained standing there, his chances of being discovered were almost absolute. One of the things would bump into him in the dark or smell him. Hear his breathing. Sneaking forward wouldn’t work, either. They’d hear his furtive footsteps, or he’d stumble on something in the darkness and they’d fall on him before he could recover.

Steeling himself, and hoping to momentarily startle and confuse his pursuers, Javier let loose with a bellow so loud that it hurt his vocal cords, and ran straight into the blackness as fast as he could. He pushed his fears aside, shoved away visions of crashing headlong into some unseen obstruction or tumbling into some hidden hole, and charged ahead. The darkness exploded all around him with cries and howls of furious alarm. Footsteps echoed around the cavern, sounding like thunder or gunshots. Javier hoped that in all the confusion, they’d be unable to tell his sounds from their own.

A shape leapt in front of him—a human-sized black spot against the darkness. It lunged for him, and Javier slammed his elbow into its throat as he ran by. The figure grunted and fell to the ground. Javier did not pause to see if it recovered. Instead, he ran even harder. He bit down on his swollen lip, bringing a fresh flare of pain. It spurred him on. Blood filled his mouth. His pulse raced. A stitch cut into his side, twisting and searing under his ribs. He tried to ignore the pain, and focused only on fleeing and breathing. The grunting and chattering increased, but sounded like it was behind him now. He summoned his strength and put on another burst of speed.

In that moment, Javier again considered backtracking—sneaking around behind them and heading back into the sewers. Then he could follow the river and hopefully find the exit. He was ashamed once more at the thought, aghast that even for a second, he’d consider leaving the others behind.

He heard something loping along beside him. Javier dodged to the right. He saw the shadowed outlines of a curved wall in front of him, but he didn’t compensate fast enough. His left shoulder scraped painfully along the rough, pitted surface and he felt his shirt tear. His skin followed suit. Javier felt a hot flare of pain, and a moment later, a warm trickle ran down his arm. He shrugged it off and plunged back into the gloom. There was no way to know how deep the scrape was or how much damage he’d done to himself, but the pain made him forget all about his plight for a second. His pursuers cried out again to remind him.

Were they closer? He couldn’t tell for sure. They sounded closer, but the darkness and the cavern’s structure had bizarre effects on sound. Either way, this had to end soon. He couldn’t keep going on the way he was. It was either fight, hide, or die, and Javier was no longer certain he could hide without the monsters spotting him.

That only left him two choices, and one of those choices was simply unacceptable.

Javier looked over his shoulder and saw the shadowy forms behind him. They were, indeed, much closer.

He spun around and charged straight at them.

“Come on, motherfuckers!”

He couldn’t tell how many he faced. Some ran, perhaps startled by his sudden attack. Others held their ground, waiting for him to come to them. A third group ran to meet him head-on, and Javier laughed aloud as they crashed into each other. He punched and kicked, knowing full well that the slightest pause or error would lead to his death. Despite the knowledge, he felt a certain peace of mind from the simple desire to hurt as many of them as he could before he went down.

If he went down.

His left fist caught one of his enemies—a female—in the side of the neck. Her breasts swayed in the darkness, brushing against him. The woman coughed violently, clutching at the spot where he’d struck. Javier barely noticed. She was merely a blur to him, a target that, once struck, was no longer important. The rest of them closed in, grasping and pushing. He shoved them away, shifted his weight and jumped high, trusting that the maneuver would throw them off guard. It did. As the creatures scattered and cried out in alarm, Javier’s heel struck bone and flesh. Something broke under his shoe. His grin grew wider. The target—male or female he could not tell—slammed into three of its fellow mutants. All four fell down, sprawling.

Javier’s landing was not elegant, but he kept his feet and smashed his forearm into the face of the next in line, before reversing his hips and using his leverage to drive the opposite arm’s elbow into the same target. The thing did not fall, but instead grabbed Javier’s arm and bit down on the exposed flesh. Javier screamed and pulled hard, yanking his arm back and leaving a wedge of flesh in the creature’s mouth. He punched again, catching the cannibal’s nose, which snapped under the impact. Javier’s stomach churned. The pain was making him nauseous.

His next swing missed as the shadow ducked below his fist, and then shoved forward. Male, and big, apparently, as he lifted Javier from the ground and rammed him into the cave wall. Javier’s body was pinned. He gritted his teeth, hissing as his opponent raked its clawed fingers across his chest and ribs, scratching and slicing with the same savagery as a rabid cat. Javier drove his knee up hard into the thing’s balls, and then kneed it again as it fell backward. Javier kicked the bruiser again as he hit the ground.

Suddenly, Javier realized that the others around him had fallen back, grunting and hooting as their larger companion rolled around on the ground. Javier’s eyes narrowed. He glanced down at his opponent. He wasn’t as big as Noigel, but his size was still ominous. As he watched, the creature staggered and then began to right itself.

Javier paused a moment, considering the situation. His enemy was bigger, older, and much stronger. He was also influential. There was no mistaking what was occurring here. The rest of the—what? tribe? pack? whatever—were stepping back and letting the big guy take care of business. They were deferring to their leader, or at least their champion. Javier wondered where this new arrival ranked in the pecking order. Obviously, Scug was a leader of sorts. Noigel seemed feared. Who was this one, and how would the others react if he was defeated?

In the darkness, a lantern flared. Javier squinted, shielding his eyes. His opponent chuckled. Javier dropped his hand and glared. He noticed now that his opponent was naked. The beast’s looks were apish, his eyes sunken into a doughy, pockmarked face beneath a thick brow.

His nose was barely discernible as anything more than nostrils, and his yellowed teeth were bared in an angry leer. Javier had bested him—hurt him—and he was very obviously pissed off about it. His intent was clear. He meant to kill.

Javier had different ideas.

He spat blood on the ground and let the big guy come to him, steeling himself, trying to prepare himself mentally. The mutant charged. Despite the gloom, Javier saw that his head was low and his arms were out at his sides. This thing wasn’t used to prey that fought back. It had exposed itself, made itself vulnerable in an effort to look even larger than it already was.

Javier dropped back and darted to the side, letting his opponent have the space he’d occupied a moment before. Adrenaline surged through Javier’s veins, boosting another wave of strength into him. The freak spun fast, roaring, and swung his arm in a wild arc. This time Javier did not dodge, but deflected the blow, slapping it aside and pushing the thing’s hand away from his body. Exposed and overbalanced, the creature stared down at his hand as if it had deliberately betrayed him. Javier grabbed his attacker’s wrist and pulled him further off balance. Then he drove his foot into the mutant’s chest as hard as he could. He felt the ribs break under the blow and grunted his satisfaction. The brute let out a yelp and stumbled. Javier twisted his hand until the bruiser had two choices, follow the direction Javier forced on him or risk a broken wrist. The thing yelped and moved the way Javier wanted. Javier turned him around.

“Fuck you,” he spat. “Think you’re king of the fucking cave cannibals?”

Javier drove his knee into the man’s kidney as soon as his back was exposed. The thing’s muscles were hard, and Javier felt the reverberation run through his heel. The fighter yelped and Javier struck again, taking no chances. This time, his opponent wailed and dropped to his knees. Using both his hands, Javier pulled the mutant’s arm high over his head and twisted.

The brutal face went down, slamming into the rocks. Javier landed on his foe’s back, knees first, driving them as deep as he could. The creature howled and thrashed. Javier had to struggle to maintain his grip on the muscled arm. He twisted again, stopping only when he’d separated the killer’s shoulder from its socket—ending the fight. Moaning, the creature shuddered once and then lay still, unconscious.

Javier seized the thing’s neck. The rest of the cannibals stepped back, hooting with cautious tones. While they watched, Javier twisted his enemy’s head, snapping his neck. Then he let the corpse fall and stood up slowly. The warped faces around him stared first at the dead man and then at Javier.

“Who’s next?” Javier’s voice was a broken croak. “Who wants it?”

He could tell that they were momentarily stunned—surprised by the unforeseen turn of events, the hunted becoming the hunter.

“Come on,” he taunted. “Who wants a piece of this?”

The pack shifted nervously. One of the creatures growled, low and menacing. Javier knew that their hesitation wouldn’t last much longer. He could sense them working themselves back up into a frenzy. The air felt charged. Electric. He had to take advantage of their confusion while he still could. The lantern light seemed to flare brighter.

Javier backed away slowly. He’d gone four steps when one of the females dropped down and grabbed the corpse. Her thick fingernails hooked into his skin and ripped long, bloody lines across his abdomen. Another of the creatures knelt and did the same, rooting between his legs.

Javier kept moving, understanding what was occurring. It wasn’t leadership or his display of strength that had saved him just now. It was simple economics. These things weren’t as smart or developed as Scug, Noigel, and some of the others he’d encountered. They were more savage. Bestial. They hunted because they were hungry, and if Javier wasn’t going to eat his kills, then they would.

He turned around and limped away as fast as he could. He didn’t want to run. He was afraid that the sudden movement might attract their attention again, the way a running rabbit attracted a fox or a dog. He heard the sound of flesh tearing behind him, accompanied by eager grunts and smacking lips. Given the number of creatures and the ravenous way they attacked their meal, it probably wouldn’t take them too long to finish. He needed to be long gone before the hunt began again.

Once he was safely out of range, Javier began to run again, retracing his steps and heading back toward the basement—intent on finding the girls and then following the river out of these catacombs once and for all. He was beginning to fear that if they didn’t leave the warrens soon, he’d become just like these creatures.

Or possibly transform into something even worse.

twenty-one

“Give me that damned crowbar,” Perry told Leo. “We need to get this door back up before more of them come.”

“You think there’s more of them in here?” Dookie asked, glancing around the foyer.

“Probably. Hold that flashlight still.”

“I can’t,” Dookie said. “My hands won’t stop shaking.”

“We need to find the light switch,” Jamal said. “Turn them back on so we can see and shit.”

“No,” Perry told him, taking the crowbar from Leo. “They turned the lights off for a reason. We flick them back on again, and they’ll know where we are. What we need to do is focus on getting this goddamned door open again.”

He tried wedging the crowbar under the edge of the metal slab, but it wouldn’t fit.

“Damn it. I wish Markus’s sledgehammer hadn’t been broken in that fight. Too bad none of us could lift the freak’s big-ass hammer, or we could just smash the door down with it. Leo, come over here and help me with this.”

Perry heard snuffling behind him. He looked over his shoulder and noticed that Leo was staring at the floor. Tears ran down the teen’s cheeks.

“Leo?”

The young man glanced up at him and wiped his nose with his hand. “Sorry. What’s up?”

Perry’s voice softened. “Give me hand. I’m going to push on the door. You see if you can wedge the crowbar underneath it.”

Nodding, Leo took the crowbar back from him. Perry stood up, glanced down the hallways to make sure they were still alone, and then pushed on the door. His sweaty palms slid against the cool metal surface. Spreading his feet apart, Perry pushed again, trying to simultaneously shove the door backward and lift it, even just a crack. He grunted and strained, but it refused to budge. Frustrated, Perry balled his fists and punched the door with both hands. The noise rang out, vibrating through the foyer. Perry grimaced as pain shot through his hands.

“Damn it!”

“Did you break them?” Dookie asked.

“No.” He turned to the teens. “Okay, we need to look around. Remember when we came in and it slid shut behind us? We all heard that sound, right? There has to be some kind of switch or mechanism around here that controls it. All we have to do is find that.”

“Before they find us,” Jamal added.

Perry nodded. “Right. We’re not gonna split up. That would be stupid. I don’t want any of you going off by yourselves. I’m guessing it’s nearby, either here in the foyer or the hallways. Dookie and Jamal, you guys search the foyer. Leo and I will search the hall. If you see or hear anything, call out. Got it?”

They nodded. Perry and Leo stepped into the corridor, searching both sides from floor to ceiling, while Dookie and Jamal combed the foyer. Perry’s nose wrinkled as he inhaled dust. He eyed the dry, yellowed wallpaper curling back from the cracked plaster. Despite the persistent dampness in the air, this house was a firetrap waiting to happen.

All it would take is one single match.

Maybe that would be for the best, he thought. Rid the neighborhood of this thing once and for all. It’s like a scab that never heals. Just sits here at the end of the block, all ugly and infected.

“You see anything?”

“No,” Leo whispered, his tone maudlin. “Just spider webs, rat shit, and mold. It would help if I knew what we were looking for. Know what I’m saying?”

“I don’t know what we’re looking for. A switch of some kind. Could be hidden, or it could be something simple. There has to be some kind of trigger mechanism to raise and lower the trapdoor. We’ll know it when we see it.”

“Mr. Watkins?”

“Hmmm?”

“Those white kids are probably dead, aren’t they?”

Perry paused before answering. “I don’t know, Leo. It’s certainly not looking good for them, though.”

“We’re gonna die in here, too, aren’t we? Just like Markus and Chris.”

“You just stop that kind of talk right now. I’m gonna get us out of here. Believe it.”

“Yeah,” Leo replied.

Perry heard the doubt and resignation in the teen’s voice, and it broke his heart. His thoughts turned to Lawanda and the kids they’d never had. And then a series of sharp, high-pitched screams echoed down the corridor.

“Shit . . .”

Leo turned ashen. “That’s Jamal and Dookie!”

“Come on!”

Perry charged down the hall, his footsteps thundering. Leo ran along behind him. They barged into the foyer, but it was empty. Leo began opening doors, frantically looking in the vacant rooms.

“Dookie,” Perry hollered. “Jamal! Where are you?”

More screams drifted down from upstairs.

“Oh Jesus . . . what the hell are they doing up there?”

He leaped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Leo ran along right behind him. The stairs creaked and cracked beneath their feet and the worm-eaten banister trembled at their passage, but neither Perry nor Leo slowed. As they reached the second floor, they heard Dookie shriek again. Jamal was strangely silent. Another long hallway stretched out before them. Both sides were lined with doors—some open and others closed. The floor was covered with a frayed, mildew-stained, burgundy carpet. Dookie’s flashlight beam winked at them from the end of the hall. They ran toward it and found him standing outside an open door. Dookie was pulling his own hair with one hand. His other hand waved the flashlight around in wide, excited arcs. His eyes bulged and his mouth was open in shock. He gasped for breath, preparing to scream again when Perry and Leo reached him. Perry grabbed his flailing arm and Dookie, shrieked, clubbing him repeatedly on the head and shoulders with the flashlight.

“Ow! Stop it. Dookie, it’s us. It’s Mr. Watkins and Leo! What’s wrong? Where’s Jamal?”

Dookie wrapped his arms around the older man and squeezed tight, burying his face in Perry’s chest. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a muffled sob. He shuddered against Perry.

“Dookie,” Perry tried again, “where’s Jamal?”

Still not looking up, Dookie pointed through the open door with the flashlight. Perry and Leo glanced at each other. Then Leo peeked through the open door. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. He suddenly seemed frozen in place. Perry could tell by his stance that something was terribly wrong. Gently disentangling himself from Dookie, he crept up behind Leo and looked inside the room.

At first, Perry didn’t understand what he was seeing. It came to him in bits and pieces. Jamal was levitating several feet off the floor with his back against the wall. There was a large sheet of plywood holding him in place. A length of thick rope had been attached to the plywood, suspending it from the ceiling. Perry followed the rope to the point where it disappeared into the darkness above. Then he glanced back down at Jamal. The teen hung there, pinned against the wall, silent and still. There was blood on the edges of the plywood. Blood on the wall behind Jamal. Blood pooling on the floor at his feet.

“Oh,” Perry whispered. “Oh . . . Jesus.”

He crept closer, and with slowly dawning horror, Perry realized what had happened. Someone had driven an assortment of kitchen knives, broken pipes, jagged shards of hard plastic, and rusty iron spikes into the plywood. Then they had winched it up in the ceiling. Somehow, Jamal had triggered the device when he entered the room. And, Perry assumed, since they’d heard both Jamal and Dookie screaming originally, the trap hadn’t killed Jamal immediately.

“Those motherfuckers,” he muttered. “Those sick motherfuckers.”

Not holding much hope, he stumbled over to Jamal, reached up, and checked the unmoving teen’s pulse. It was as still as the house.

“Is he?” Leo asked.

Perry nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“I tried to stop him,” Dookie sobbed. “I told him to stay downstairs, but he figured there might be a light switch up here. Then he decided that maybe we could try one of the windows.”

“They’re bricked up,” Perry choked. “Why would he—”

“But they’re not, Mr. Watkins.” Dookie pointed with the flashlight. “Look.”

Perry swiveled his head, following the beam of light across the room. There were two windows in the wall. Both were barricaded with thick sheets of moldering plywood, but unlike the downstairs windows, they hadn’t been bricked over. He glanced down at the floor. The half-rotten floorboards were covered with a thick layer of dust and dead insects. The only signs of disturbance were their own footprints and Jamal’s blood, spreading out in a pool. Obviously, the room hadn’t been entered in a long time. With the pervasive dampness in the air, it was possible that the plywood had weakened somewhat, and if so, whoever had boarded up the windows in the first place hadn’t checked them lately.

Fingers crossed, Perry strode across the floor and tapped on the plywood sheet covering one window. It was solid. He checked the second window. The plywood covering this one was streaked with mildew and mold, and moist to the touch. Holding his breath, he shoved the sharp edge of the crowbar against it. The blade sank into the wood easily enough.

Perry started to cry. He turned to Leo and Dookie, tears of relief streaming down his dirty cheeks.

“It’s rotten. Not all the way, but enough that I think I can get it off.”

They stared at him blankly, as if not understanding what he was saying.

“We can get out,” Perry whispered. “Through the window. Come here, boys. Quickly now.”

Dookie’s stunned expression crumbled, replaced by one of numb disbelief. Leo seemed unsure, as well. But they did as he asked and crossed toward him. They stood there, arms at their sides, looking at everything but Jamal.

Perry jammed the crowbar between the barrier and the wall, and wiggled it back and forth. A small chunk of wood broke off, splintering. He let it fall to the floor and pried off a bigger piece about the size of his fist. Grinning, he attacked it with abandon, no longer caring if he made any sound. They’d be free in minutes.

He’d cleared about half the plywood away, exposing a little less than half of the window before hitting solid wood. After that, his progress became harder. Because of how it had been constructed, Perry found it difficult to get any leverage. He began to grow winded.

“Damn it.”

“What’s wrong?” Leo asked. “Why’d you stop?”

“The rest of it is solid,” Perry gasped. “I can’t get it loose.”

He wiped sweat from his brow and studied them both for a moment. Then he turned around and tried unlocking the window hasp. It was rusted into place and wouldn’t move. Instead, Perry smashed the glass out of the portion of the window that they could see. Immediately, a cool breeze washed over them. To Perry, it was one of the most pleasurable sensations he’d ever experienced. He turned back around again. Leo and Dookie’s expressions were terrified.

“Somebody’s gonna hear that glass breaking,” Leo scolded. “You’ll lead them right to us.”

“I know,” Perry said. “That’s why we’ve got to do this quickly. Dookie, you’re the only skinny enough to fit through that window. Go for help.”

“You’re fucking tripping, Mr. Watkins.”

“Don’t you get smart with me, boy.”

“Who you calling boy?”

“We don’t have time to argue, Dookie. Get out that fucking window and go for help. The police must have arrived by now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Leo said.

Perry sighed, exasperated. “If they haven’t, then tell my wife what’s happened. Tell her to call 911 again and stay on the line with them until somebody comes. She’s got to make them send somebody. And then, while she’s doing that, you start banging on doors and waking people up.”

“And tell them what?”

“Tell them that we’re fucking trapped in here with a bunch of psychos. Tell them to get their torches and pitchforks, just like in those old monster movies, and bash that fucking door in! Now get going, Dookie.”

Still wide-eyed and stunned, the nervous teen peered out the window. Then, swallowing hard, he nodded.

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

“You’re damn right you will,” Perry grumbled. “Just hurry. And be careful. You won’t do us much good if you break your neck on the way down.”

“I’m on it, yo.” Confidence crept back into Dookie’s voice. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Perry and Leo hoisted him up and helped him through the hole. They watched his head disappear, then his shoulders and chest, and then the rest of him, until finally, Dookie was outside on the arched roof. He turned around, pressed one hand to the remaining glass, and then crawled away. They watched him leave until the darkness ultimately swallowed him.

“Think he’ll make it?” Leo whispered.

“He damn well better,” Perry muttered. “Now let’s get back downstairs and find someplace to hide, before any more of them show up.”

They left the room and slowly made their way back down the hall to the top of the stairs, listening as they proceeded. There was no sign that Jamal’s death or Dookie’s escape had attracted any more attention. The house was utterly silent, as if holding its breath.

As they started down the stairs, Perry wondered what would happen when it exhaled. What would come crawling out of the woodwork looking for them?

twenty-two

There was nowhere left for her to go.

Kerri had searched, trying to find an exit from the endless, confusing network of tunnels, but with the darkness and the predators haunting her every step, finding one had been impossible. And so, in the long run, she chose to go for the only exit that she was sure existed. An unreasonable exit, but a way out all the same. She chose to return upstairs, to the house where everything had started, and hope that she could find a way past the barricaded entrance and the traps and the wooden walls that had appeared from nowhere. She had no idea what had happened to Heather and Javier, but she feared that they were dead. If they were alive, she reasoned, then she’d still hear them screaming.

Her legs shook with exhaustion. The scratches and cuts on her body ached. She felt feverish, and her mouth was parched. Miserable and numb, Kerri shuffled onward. Her heart seemed to echo in her chest as if she’d been hollowed out. And in a way, maybe she had been.

She’d seen her boyfriend and her friends slaughtered tonight, and in return, she’d killed and survived. There was no way she’d ever be able to return to the life she’d had before the concert. That life was dead. That old Kerri was dead, lying on the floor alongside Tyler and Steph with her brains bashed out.

She would survive, yes, but could she live with her survival? That was the question Kerri considered as she moved along cautiously, listening for sounds of pursuit or any possible hint that her friends were still alive. Instead, the caves were unsettlingly quiet.

Kerri emerged from a tunnel and after a moment, she recognized the landscape. She was back in the cavern that connected to the basement. She breathed a sigh of relief. It looked and sounded deserted. The rest of the killers must be searching for her deeper in the catacombs. All she had to do now was make it upstairs and then find a way outside. And if she couldn’t do that—

—well, if she couldn’t do that, she’d return to the room on the first floor where she and Javier had originally hidden. That was a safe place. The freaks hadn’t found them there. She’d go back to that room, curl up in the darkness, and just go to sleep for a little while. When she woke up again, things would be better. She’d be able to think clearer.

Smiling at the prospect, Kerri began softly humming the beat of a song from the concert they’d seen earlier in the evening. She crossed the cavern, not bothering to be furtive or cautious. Nothing could touch her now. She had a hiding place in mind, and she’d be okay.

It wasn’t until her humming turned into quiet giggles, that Kerri realized what she was doing. Stifling herself, she shook her head, trying to clear it. A new wave of terror washed over her. Was she crazy? Had she snapped? Or was this just some kind of delayed shock—a bizarre reaction to the pressure of the situation? Kerri became aware that she was trembling and that her arms were wrapped around her shoulders, squeezing tightly. She’d twirled her hair with her fingers and then chewed on it, the way she’d done when she was a little girl. She forced herself to stop it and tried to shake the dread threatening to overwhelm her.

I’m losing it, she thought. I’m really losing it. Got to get a grip on myself, or I might as well just give up now and lie down right here.

She straightened up and started walking again. Her hand trailed over the wall, partly for guidance and partly for comfort. A prayer came to mind, and she opened her mouth to recite it. Then she crushed it instead, before it could form. If the Lord existed, then He had a lot to answer for, as far as Kerri was concerned. She would never forgive the people—things—who had killed her friends, and she would not allow herself to forgive God either. Just because He’d written the rules, that didn’t mean He got to break them. Some sins were inexcusable. What He’d allowed to happen to them tonight was at the top of the list.

Kerri reached the cellar without incident, emerging into it from a large crack in the wall. Red clay squished between her fingers as she entered the dank room. She wiped her hands on her pants, glancing down as she did so. When she looked up again, there was a figure standing in front of her.

Kerri screamed, and the figure rushed toward her and clamped its hand over her mouth. Its palm was coated with dirt and dried blood, as was the rest of its body. It wore clothing, but the garments were almost invisible beneath the grime and gore. So were its facial features. She didn’t recognize Javier until he spoke, and even then she wasn’t sure.

“K-Kerri?”

His voice was strained and hoarse. Kerri struggled against him, and he pressed his hand tighter against her mouth.

“Sssshhhh. Kerri, don’t! It’s me. It’s me, Kerri. Javier.”

She stopped resisting and let her body go slack. Javier slowly removed his hand from her mouth, and Kerri stared at him, gasping. She took one faltering step backward.

“It’s me,” he whispered again, holding up his hands in reassurance. “Are you okay?”

“Oh my God . . . Javier?”

“Yeah, it’s me. It’s really me.”

“Holy shit. I can’t believe . . .”

She ran to him and wrapped her arms around him, ignoring the blood and filth. She squeezed him tightly, and Javier returned the gesture. Neither of them broke the embrace.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

Kerri nodded against his chest. “Yeah. Cuts and scratches, mostly. I almost got . . .” She tried to say raped, but the word got stuck in her throat. “I’m okay. What about you? All that blood!”

“Most of it isn’t mine.”

“But your wrists. Jesus Christ, that looks really bad, Javier.”

“They’re fine. I’m fine. They’ve clotted now. Soon as we get out of here, I’ll go to the hospital and get some disinfectant and a few stitches and be good to go.”

Kerri’s spirits soared, and her head cleared. “Did you find a way out?”

“Yeah. I was looking for you guys in areas that I hadn’t been to yet, but then I got the idea to come back up here, thinking that maybe one of you had circled back around or hid here all along. But, yeah, I found a way out. There’s a sewer tunnel. These things living down here hacked their way into it. It’s got a little river running through it. We can follow the water, after we find Heather and Brett.”

“Is it far?”

“Bit of a hike, but I remember the way. Have you seen the others?”

“Well . . . Brett’s dead.”

“Oh, shit. Are you sure?”

Kerri nodded, wiping her eyes. “Pretty sure. That thing, Noigel—the one who killed Steph and Tyler—had Brett when we all ran away. He smashed Brett against the wall right below the basement stairs. Brett stopped screaming after that.”

“Goddamn it.”

“Yeah. I should have . . . I should have helped him, but I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay.” Javier smoothed her hair. “What about Heather? She’s got to be okay. Have you seen her?”

“No. Not since we all got split up.”

“She’s right here,” said a voice in the darkness.

Startled, Kerri and Javier broke their embrace and glanced frantically into the gloom. The voice was distinct. Rough and gravely.

“Scug,” Javier said. “You sick fuck.”

Chuckling, Scug stepped out of the shadows, carrying Heather’s decapitated head in one hand. Her glazed eyes stared sightlessly. Her mouth was open, as if begging for help. One of her cheeks had been torn so that it hung down in a flap of loose skin. Her cheeks were the color of bruised fruit. Strands of tissue dangled down from her mangled neck.

Javier closed his eyes and sighed. Kerri’s hands went to her face. Her fingernails dug into her cheeks as she stared at her friend’s head in horror.

“So you two recognize her then?” Scug asked. “Good. That’s real good. Had a hell of a time getting her head back from the rest of the garbage. They wanted her for themselves, you know? But that’s how the trash are. Greedy little bastards. That’s why we keep them down there. By the time I got to her, this was all that was left. Damn shame, really. I was going to use the rest of her, too. Ain’t got any use for just her head, except to maybe put it on the end of my pecker and dance around a little. Maybe fuck the neck hole. What do you say there, lover boy? Want to give her one last go?”

“Fuck you.” Javier’s voice was thick with grief, barely a whisper.

Scug laughed. “Not so tough without your little belt, huh? You’ve caused us a lot of trouble tonight. Don’t know how you got away. You were supposed to be skinned and gutted by now.”

“Shit happens.” Javier stepped between Kerri and Scug, putting Kerri behind him. “That’s always sort of been my philosophy. You and your sick friends really put it to the fucking test tonight, though. Anyway, yeah, I escaped. Sorry to disappoint you. I killed your two nasty-ass girlfriends, though, before I got away. They died slow.”

Scug shrugged. “Plenty more where they come from. I may even have a turn with the little miss standing there behind you.”

“Not tonight, you won’t. You’ll have to go through me.”

“I’m gonna go through you anyway, boy. Gonna slit your belly open and pull out your guts and show them to you. Then I’m gonna squeeze the shit out of them and smear it all over you before you die.”

“Kerri.” Javier kept his voice calm and level. “Run for the stairs. Don’t stop.”

“But you said the river—”

“You’ll never find it yourself. Now get going. I’ve got him.”

“Javier, you can’t!”

“Do you see what he has in his hand?” Javier exploded. “Go, goddamn it!”

Kerri turned and ran. When she glanced back, Scug and Javier were still facing one another. She dashed on, and when she turned around again, both men had been lost in the darkness. She looked for the stairs and found them. Panicked, she didn’t see Brett’s corpse until she tripped over it. Kerri went sprawling across the stone floor, scraping the skin on her knees and elbows. Crying, she glanced over at what was left of her friend. His skull had been cracked in half and it looked like something big and round had drilled into what was left of his brains.

Both of his eyeballs were missing, and the bloody sockets had been split and widened, as if whatever had been stuck in his brain had been inserted into them, as well. Retching and sobbing, Kerri stumbled to her feet and fled for the stairs. When she opened her mouth to breathe, a scream slipped out. It echoed through the chamber long after she was gone.

“She won’t get far,” Scug said.

“We’ll see about that. She might surprise you.”

“Doubt it. Noigel’s upstairs, dealing with some more guests. He likes the ladies, Noigel does. Of course, he likes the boys, too. Hell, he likes anything he can stick his pecker in, long as it’s dead first.”

“You’re a twisted bag of shit, aren’t you?” Javier shook his head in disgust.

“Here,” Scug said. “Have a go.”

He tossed Heather’s head at Javier. He flinched as it slammed into his chest, recoiling in horror and disbelief. The head thumped onto the floor and rolled away, leaving a wet stain. A part of him was disgusted, and he immediately felt ashamed for that reaction. How many times had they made love in his car or at her parents’ house or at his house when his mother wasn’t home? Or that one time backstage after the school play? She’d been so warm. Smelled so good. Felt so soft. Now the girl he loved had been reduced to this. Turning away from her, Javier glared at Scug. His hands curled into fists. His lips felt swollen and his ears and cheeks burned.

“Good,” Scug teased. “That’s good. Get all mad now. Think you can take me?”

“It’s just you and me, you sick fuck. Your little mutants aren’t here to help you.”

Scug wagged his index finger in the air and then whistled. The darkness came alive with rustling shadows. One by one, more of the freaks stumbled, slithered, and loped into sight, slowly surrounding Javier. Some carried flashlights and lanterns. Several more had weapons—everything from crude stone clubs to expensive cutlery. They circled him, snarling like a pack of dogs.

Scug grinned. “What’s that you were saying?”

“Pussy.” Javier tried to sound unafraid. “You scared to fight your own battles?”

“If I was going to eat you by myself, then yeah, you’d be my kill. But I think the rest of my family would like a piece of you. And besides, I don’t want to mess up my clothes.”

Smiling, Scug ran his hands over the tanned human hide he was wearing, as if smoothing out the wrinkles.

Adopting a ready stance, Javier studied his opponents. These were not the same as the others he’d seen. He could tell that immediately. They were malformed, yes, but they seemed more symmetrical, more balanced. More normal. One edged closer to him. It was sleek and muscular, with a broad jaw line and a wide mouth filled with teeth. The eyes were spaced too far apart and had no whites at all, but only the massive dark pupils.

“Sic him, boy,” Scug said. “And some of the rest of you get upstairs and help Noigel. Tell him I want her skin, so he’s not to fuck it up. It’s been a long night, and I’m getting tired.”

The thing with the dark eyes closed the gap. It did not growl as it came toward him. It roared, the sound of its voice blasting around the cellar as it charged. The rest of the creatures shouted in response.

Javier acted purely on instinct, and that simple reflex saved his life. He dropped back as the mutant attacked, and kicked the slavering thing in the stomach. It slammed into the wall and then shook off the blow, prepared to attack again. Before Javier could react, a second cannibal came for him. Sharp teeth ripped into his thigh, slicing through the heavy denim of his jeans and into the skin and muscle beneath with appalling ease. Javier jabbed his elbow down and struck the back of the monster’s head. It was like striking stone. His elbow thrummed from the impact.

A third creature attacked, even as the second gnawed his leg like a dog with a rawhide bone. Javier threw up his arm to block it, but thick fingernails cut into his forearm. The strike happened so fast that for a moment he thought it had missed. Then the deep gashes started to bleed. The pain followed a second later—hot and nauseating.

Javier dislodged the thing gnawing on his leg, bringing more agony as he did so. He backed up to give himself room and immediately realized his mistake. In stepping away from his attackers, he’d moved closer to the rest of the things.

They seized him as one. Powerful teeth clamped down on Javier’s shoulder. Claws lashed across his face, running lines of fire over his lips and nose, flaying his mouth open, cutting into his gums and fragmenting his teeth in one savage stroke. He managed to reach out with his fingers and return the favor, slashing across the deep set eyes of the beast. Javier bared his ruined teeth in a grimace as the fangs in his shoulder dug deeper, pressing together deep inside the meat of his arm and drawing a thick spray of blood. More teeth sank into his thigh, his waist, and his breast. Something cold and jagged and sharp pierced his buttocks. He tried to scream, but there was something wrong with his throat. Blood spilled into Javier’s eyes, blinding him. He shook his head from side to side in an effort to see.

His vision cleared in time to see a creature with a wide, hinged mouth lunge forward. He’d never seen so many teeth in a mouth before—multiple rows, all jagged and sharp. The thing snapped its massive jaws shut around his face. Javier jittered and thrashed as the mutant broke bones and pulped his jaw and forehead, carving a massive trench down the front of his skull.

He had time to think one last thought before he died.

Wait for me, Heather. I’m coming. I’m—

twenty-three

Leo and Perry reached the foyer and huddled together in front of the metal door, waiting for Dookie to return with help or for more of the house’s weird inhabitants to show up. Leo prayed for the former but was dreadfully certain it would be the latter. So when a door suddenly opened and a female figure stumbled out of the darkness, he leaped to his feet, ready to fight. Mr. Watkins sprang up beside him a second later, an unlit cigarette tumbling from his open mouth. Both men yelled in surprise and fright.

So did the girl.

They stared at each other. Leo frowned and blinked, trying to understand what he was seeing. She was dressed like one of the kids that had run away from him earlier in the evening, but she couldn’t be one of them. The girls in that group had all been white. This girl was red. Scarlet. She was covered in blood from head to toe. It matted her hair and crusted on her cheeks and stained her clothes, and although he could see some superficial wounds on her arms and face, Leo was fairly certain that most of the blood wasn’t hers. Leo shook his head slowly, and reached out a hand.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

The terrified girl jumped at the sound of his voice and shrank away from them, cowering against the wall. She whimpered, but did not speak.

“It’s okay,” Leo murmured. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. We’re stuck in here, just like you are.”

“Are you hurt?” Mr. Watkins asked her.

She stared at them, wide-eyed, but still refused to speak. Her chin trembled.

“Where are your friends?” Leo asked. “Them kids who ran in here with you? Are they okay? Do they need help?”

The girl flinched as if slapped. Then she opened her mouth and moaned. It was the most heartbreaking sound Leo had ever heard.

“Sssshhh,” he whispered. “Don’t do that, now. You’ll lead them right to us. We need to be quiet and shit.”

“Help is on the way,” Mr. Watkins explained. “Somebody went for help. They should be here any minute.”

As if in verification, they heard muffled voices from the other side of the door. It sounded like there was quite a large crowd outside. A moment later, Dookie yelled to them.

“Yo! Leo? Mr. Watkins? You alright?”

“Yeah,” Leo called as loudly as he dared. “We’re fine. Just get us the fuck out of here, dog. And hurry!”

“I got everybody out here. Angel and the crew and Mrs. Watkins and—”

“Dookie,” Mr. Watkins yelled, “I don’t care if you got all of Blackwater out there, along with a Navy SEAL team. Just get us the hell out of here. Now!”

“Get back from the door,” Dookie shouted. “Angel’s got a blowtorch!”

The men backed away. The girl hesitated, her eyes darting from them to the door and then back to them again. After a moment, she stepped toward them.

“That’s it,” Leo urged. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. What happened earlier was just a misunderstanding. It’s all gonna be okay now.”

Through the steel barrier came the hissing and spitting sound of the cutting torch. Within minutes, the smell of scorched metal filled the air. Then they heard something else. Footsteps.

From inside the house.

A lot of them, judging by the sound.

“Oh, shit,” Leo yelled. “Hurry up, y’all! We got company!”

“Quiet,” Mr. Watkins said. “They’ll hear you.”

“They’ll hear us anyway,” Leo countered. “You telling me they ain’t gonna hear the others outside or smell that blowtorch?”

“Coming in,” Dookie called. “Just hang on!”

There was a great commotion as the men outside on the porch grunted and jostled and shouted orders to one another. Then, slowly, the metal door was hauled away, revealing dozens of faces peering in at them in shock and concern. Dookie stood at the front of the crowd, arms crossed over his chest defiantly.

“Told you I could do this shit,” he said, grinning. Leo and Mr. Watkins hurried forward. The bloody girl limped along between them. They hovered in the doorway, shrugging off the multitude of hands that reached for them.

“Damn,” Leo said. “The whole neighborhood is here.”

“Seems that way,” Mr. Watkins agreed, grinning as he spotted his wife amidst the throng.

Dookie’s eyes widened when he saw the bloodstained girl. “Are her friends still in there?”

“We don’t know,” Leo said. “She ain’t talking. I think she’s in shock or something. Way she’s acting though, I’m betting that they’re all dead.”

Behind them, the pounding footsteps thundered closer, seeming to come from all directions and behind every door. The walls and floorboards vibrated with the sound. Dust drifted down from overhead. The lights swayed.

Mr. Watkins snapped his fingers in front of the girl’s eyes and got her attention. She stared at him blankly.

“Are the rest of your friends alive?”

She blinked at him. Mr. Watkins glanced at Leo, frowned, and then looked back at the girl.

“Listen to me, girl! Are any of your friends still in there?”

She shrugged almost imperceptibly and whimpered, low and mournful.

Mr. Watkins turned to Leo. “Take her outside and get her some help.”

Leo flinched. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna do what somebody should have done years ago. I’m gonna finish this place once and for all.”

“Are you crazy? They’re coming.”

“Do as I say, now, Leo. Get her to safety. It’s time to start cleaning this neighborhood up.”

The crowd parted, allowing Leo and the injured girl to get through. People gasped when they saw her condition. Most of the assembled throng followed along behind them, shouting questions. Perry shook hands with Angel, the chop shop owner.

“Thanks. Glad you brought that cutting torch along.”

“Don’t mention it. What the fuck is going on, Mr. Watkins?”

“Can I bum a smoke off you first?”

Sirens wailed in the distance. The mechanic fumbled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and handed one to Perry. He popped it into his mouth, unlit. The sirens drew closer. So did the commotion from inside the house. The hurried footsteps were accompanied by a chorus of howls and grunts now. Perry saw Dookie shudder at the sound.

“The police finally decided to show up?” Perry asked him.

The teen nodded nervously, his eyes flicking over Perry’s shoulder. “Yeah, they said they were on the way. We’d best go, Mr. Watkins. Don’t you think?”

Angel frowned at the increasingly louder noises coming from inside the house. “What the hell is that?”

“Call 911.” Perry took the blowtorch from the chop shop owner’s hands and stepped back into the house. “Tell them we’re gonna need the fire department, too.”

Perry adjusted the flame so that it was low, and lit his cigarette with it. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

“Ah, that’s good.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Dookie shouted. “Get the fuck out of there, Mr. Watkins.”

Perry ignored him. “Go do what I said. Call 911 now. Get some fire trucks down here.”

Without another word, he turned the sputtering blue flame up high and touched it to the walls. As he’d suspected, they went up quickly, despite the pervasive dampness. Perry tried not to think about the other missing kids. Judging from the girl’s condition, they were probably dead. Most likely they’d been slaughtered the same way Markus, Chris, and Jamal had been.

“They’ve got to be dead,” he whispered around the cigarette. “They’ve just got to be.”

He repeated it to himself over and over again, trying to assuage his conscience. This had to be done. How many years had this place been a blight on the neighborhood, spreading its poisonous roots through concrete and steel? How many people had gone missing in here over the years? It had to end. If the kids were alive—and he doubted very much that was the case—then they’d be the last victims the house ever claimed.

Perry bent over and applied the torch to the carpet and floor, feeling a serene sense of peace as the bloodstained floorboards blackened and smoked, then erupted into flame. Thick smoke curled toward him. The fire grew louder, drowning out the footsteps and growls. Perry caught a glimpse of something on the upstairs landing—a diminutive, naked figure, horribly deformed. Then the smoke obscured it. He stepped back and ran the blowtorch all around the front door’s splintered frame. Then, finished, he handed the torch back to Angel and Dookie and hurried them down the porch.

“Thought I told you to go call the fire department. I guess it doesn’t matter, though. Maybe we should just let it burn down into the ground first. Then we’ll call.”

Angel stared, dumfounded. Dookie shook his head and grinned.

“You are one badass motherfucker, Mr. Watkins.”

“Thank you. And watch your mouth, son. No need to talk about my mother.”

Only when they’d reached the street and he was holding Lawanda in his arms did Perry turn around. The open doorway was choked with thick, black and white smoke, and already the blaze was flickering higher, touching the roof overhanging the porch and climbing toward the second story. Within minutes, he expected the entire structure would be engulfed in flames. He thought he saw several deformed shadows in the doorway, dim against the swirling clouds of smoke, but when he looked again, they were gone.

Perry guided Lawanda and Dookie through the crowd, refusing to answer anyone’s questions, including his wife’s. When they reached Leo and the girl, the five of them looked back at the inferno.

“You set it on fire?” Leo asked. “Ain’t the cops gonna know it was you, Mr. Watkins? All these people saw you do it.”

“Maybe,” Perry said, smiling sadly. “But I suspect they’ll keep it to themselves. That’s the way things are down here.”

“True that,” Dookie agreed. “And besides, ain’t nobody here gonna be sad to see that place gone.”

“If they ask,” Perry said, “I’ll just tell them that I don’t know who started the fire. We’ll blame it on one of the killers. After all, the place was old and rotten. A real firetrap.”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “That’s true.”

“You know what they say,” Dookie chuckled. “Shit happens.”

Then the girl standing next to Leo stiffened and began to scream.

She was still shrieking when the police and paramedics arrived.