“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.