The combined stench of the horde grew overwhelming as they bore down on her. It snapped Heather out of her stunned paralysis. She flung the lantern at them and pivoted around on her knees, facing the opposite direction. She heard glass breaking and metal clanging as the lantern caromed off the rocks behind her. There was a brief but bright flare, and the creatures screamed. Heather screamed, too. She bounced off the tunnel wall with bruising force and started crawling back the way she’d come. She hurried, heedless of the damage her mad scramble across the stone floor was doing to her palms and knees. The light dimmed and then fizzled. Darkness enveloped the tunnel once again. Heather didn’t care. She knew the way back to the room. There were no branching passageways for her to get lost in. Most importantly, in the darkness, she couldn’t see the pursuing horrors.
She could hear them, though. With the fire extinguished, their cries grew frenzied. They chased after her again, and while their malformations and handicaps slowed them down, they sounded tenacious and enraged. Heather crawled faster, her teeth bared and her eyes wide, trying desperately to see. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her lungs worked like a bellows. Her gasps seemed to echo back to her. She ignored the pain each time a rock sliced through her palms or scraped her arms. Spurred on by adrenaline and fear, and unable to navigate except by touch and sound, Heather struck her head on a low-hanging outcrop. The force of the blow knocked her flat on her belly. She cried out, and the creatures cheered. Warm blood flowed into her left eye. Her fingertips explored her forehead. There was a cut above her left eyebrow. She winced as she touched it. Heather wiped the blood away and tried to sit up.
Thick, clammy fingers clutched at her ankle. Screaming, Heather kicked, and the fingers slipped away. They returned a second later, gripping more forcefully this time. Other appendages joined in the effort —tendrils, fingers, teeth, and things she was too afraid to identify. Heather spun around and swung wildly with her knife. Several of the creatures howled and spat. Her foot scraped along something that felt like a rib cage. She stabbed the knife downward, slashing at a small hand squeezing her thigh. The tunnel filled with shrieks—hers and theirs. Something warm and wet—blood or spittle—splashed across her cheek. Heather lunged backward, kicking and slashing, and the creatures fell back. She started to scuttle away, but something leaped onto her chest and slapped her face. Despite the mutant’s diminutive size, it was a powerful blow. Her cheek stung and her ears rang. More blood flowed into her eye from the cut above her brow.
Another monster gnawed at her arm. Judging by the feel, it was toothless. Heather lashed out at it and felt scaly skin. She swung her arm, knocking the beast on her chest backward, and slashed at the scaly one with her sharpened butter knife. Both fell away. Heather flipped over and scurried forward again. The knife slipped from her grasp.
“No. No nonononono …”
Sobbing, Heather pawed at the ground. Her hand closed on the cool, metallic handle and she seized it. Then she froze, muscles stiffening, her mouth open in a silent scream. She tried to cry out, but all that came from her lips was a fluttering sigh.
Heather was no stranger to pain. When she was seven years old, Heather had fallen from a tree and dislocated her shoulder. The pain had made her nauseous. A few years later, when she’d impaled her calf on a stick while playing tag with her brother and some neighbor kids, the pain had been intolerable. She’d had a few bad weeks where she was almost certain she would never be able to walk without discomfort again. Neither of those experiences came close to what she was feeling now. Dozens of sharp teeth sank into the back of her calf, just two inches below her knee. The pain bloomed like a flower, slowly spreading into something bright and vivid.
Talons slashed at her ankle and the teeth sank deeper into her calf. A hot, sandpapery tongue lapped at the blood welling from the wound. Heather lashed out with her free leg, ramming her heel into the face of the creature behind her. It jerked backward, but not before taking a few pieces of meat with it. Heather spun around and slashed blindly in the dark with the knife. Something hot splashed across her arm and hand. Her attacker emitted a horrid, bubbling squeal and snatched the knife from Heather’s grip. She heard it thrashing and howling instead of trying to attack her again. Above its cries, she heard the rest of the horde closing in.
Hoping that the body of their wounded comrade would slow the rest of the creatures, Heather turned around and limped toward the tunnel’s exit again. When she reached the grotto, she felt her way out of the crevice. Unlike before, the strange room was pitch-black. Some of the fallen papers rustled beneath her feet as she plunged forward.
Behind her, the sounds of pursuit continued.
***
Javier tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. His head drooped as they forced him onward. His eyelids fluttered. Fatigue had settled over him like a coarse, heavy blanket. Each shuffling step seemed to take an enormous amount of physical effort, and when he slowed, Scar-Face and the hairy girl shoved him forward. What he wanted more than anything at that moment, even more than escaping, was to lie down and take a nap. He fought against the desire, still retaining enough alertness to know that if he did that now, he would surely die.
The truth was he was probably going to die anyway, unless he figured out something soon. His captors were ruthless and showed no remorse. They’d cut his wrists with the same practical efficiency and disregard that someone making a salad might show toward a stick of celery. He wasn’t sure how long he’d bled, but when they deemed him sufficiently weakened, Scug had called a halt, and they’d tied his wounds with scraps of damp, mildew-covered cloth. Then they’d applied pressure before marching him forward again. His wrists still hurt, but the bleeding had stopped. He was sure that it would start again—and from more places than just his wrists—when they arrived at their final destination.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked, his voice slurred.
His captors didn’t answer.
“Hey,” Javier tried again. “Where are you—”
Scug backhanded him, splitting Javier’s lip open. Wincing, Javier spat blood before he could swallow it.
“No more talking,” Scug warned, cracking the belt again. “Do it again and I’ll gut you right here. Let your insides slip out and show you what they look like, all wet and shiny. Ever strangled a man with his own intestines? I have. Plenty of times. It’s always a funny sight, watching them flap around and choke, eyes bugging out of their heads, faces turning as purple as the guts wrapped around their throats. I’ll do it to you, too, if you don’t keep walking.”
Deciding to take a gamble, Javier just shrugged his shoulders and did his best to smile. It hurt his mouth, but got the man’s attention. Blood welled out of his split lip.
“What are you grinning about?” Scug asked. “You smile too much.”
“I’m just thinking that it doesn’t matter anyway. Do what you want. The police will be here soon. We called them before we came inside.”
“No, they won’t. The police never come. And even if they did, do you think we care? This is our home. Our place. They can’t hurt us here. No man can hurt us here.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“We have always been here. Our people were here before the city, before the buildings and the cars and everything else, and we’ll be here after it’s all gone. Us and the cockroaches and the rats.”
“Your people? What are you, exactly?”
Scug didn’t answer. Javier repeated the question, and again his captor refused to answer, so Javier decided to ask something different.
“Why do you wear women’s skin over your own?”
Scug’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth. He rushed forward, fist raised over his head, ready to strike Javier again.
“This is
my
skin! My fucking skin. Got it? Now, no more talking. Move!”
Scar-Face and the hairy girl forced him to pick up the pace, and Javier struggled to keep up with them. He tried to keep track of each twisting passageway and of each turn that they made, but he was soon hopelessly disoriented. The weak flashlight beam did little to dispel his confusion. The only thing he was sure of was that the ground seemed to be staying relatively flat, rather than sloping upward or deeper into the earth. His mind began to wander again, and the pain in his wrists and lip dulled. His feet moved automatically, in time with those of his captors. He didn’t come to his senses again until the dwarf popped out of the wall.
One minute, it had just been the four of them in the tunnel. The next, there was a dwarf standing by Scug’s side, chattering excitedly in a guttural, ugly language Javier couldn’t understand. Some of the words were rudimentary English. Others seemed nothing more than a collection of snarls, grunts and homeless syllables. Javier raised his head and noticed a small passageway to their right. He assumed that the new arrival must have come from there. The dwarf was completely hairless, and its naked body was covered with thick black scabs. He listened to its conversation with Scug, and tried to figure out what they were talking about.
“Anyone catch her yet?”
The dwarf shook its head.
“Well, I’ll look into it myself. It’s my fault for letting her give me the slip earlier. Can’t have her hurting the babies.”
The dwarf spoke again. It seemed agitated.
“When it rains, it pours.” Scug shook his head. “How many are there?”
The dwarf held up six crooked fingers.
“I’ll check the nursery,” Scug told it. “Take care of the bitch once and for all. You go find Noigel. He’s probably still fucking that kid’s brains out back near the basement steps. Tell him we have more visitors up top.”
The dwarf squealed a reply.
“You do as I say and interrupt him,” Scug replied.
“He won’t hurt you if you tell him I sent you. Can’t be many brains left in that kid’s head by now anyway. He can worry about spraying his ball juice later. We need him on the hunt.”
The dwarf made an almost comical salute with one hand, then turned and dashed back up the side tunnel.
“And tell him not to fuck these six in the head after he’s killed them,” Scug called after the fleeing form. Then he turned to the women and pointed at Javier. “One of this one’s friends—I’m guessing the girl I was chasing earlier—is near the nursery. The babies are worked up. I’m going to go tend to that because none of the rest of you seems to be able to fucking handle it. You get him situated. Tell Curd that there are more on the way. A bunch of new arrivals just showed up. They’re at the door now. Tell Curd that Noigel will be bringing them down. Give him a hand butchering if he needs it.”
They nodded their assent and Scug skulked away, disappearing into the darkness, heading back down the passageway. Javier tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. New arrivals? Who could it be? The police? The gangbangers who had chased them in here in the first place? Maybe their parents, come to look for them after discovering the car? And who was at the nursery—whatever that was? Scug had indicated that it was one of Javier’s friends and that it was a female. That meant it had to be Heather or Kerri. He felt like calling out, regardless of whether they could actually hear him and telling them to hide because Scug was on the way, but such an effort would only waste energy. He’d be more help to them if he was free. Then another thought occurred to him. Scug had twice mentioned Noigel and something about him skull-fucking somebody. The first time, Javier hadn’t paid attention, but this second time, Scug had indicated that the assault was taking place near the basement steps. Could the victim be one of his friends? Could it be Heather?
Javier’s heart pounded. A sense of urgency swept over him. He needed to get free and he needed to do it now—both for his friends and for himself. With Scug’s departure, the odds were a little more even. He sensed that this might be his last opportunity to escape. He concentrated on his breathing as they marched him forward again, trying to simultaneously calm himself and wake himself up. He allowed the females to lead him onward until he was certain that they were out of Scug’s earshot. Then he took a deep breath and made his play.
Javier lurched forward, shifting his weight. At the same time, he squirmed, trying desperately to free his arms from their grip. His ploy worked, but not without consequences. The woman’s flashlight clattered to the floor. His right arm slipped easily enough from Scar-Face’s grip, but the hairy girl squeezed harder on his left arm. Her nails sank into his wound, and blood flowed again. Screaming, Javier wrenched his arm free and stumbled forward, slamming into the tunnel wall.