Gatekeepers (13 page)

“Better!” he hollered back to Toria. “But tell him to move it a little to the left!”

She passed it along, and Xander nudged the camera angle the wrong way.

“
My
left! The camera's left!” David yelled. He heard his sister echo the words.

Xander rolled his eyes. He adjusted the camera, raised his eyebrows in question.

“That's good!” David said.

Xander nodded, took the pencil out of his mouth, and made a mark off camera. His head filled the monitor, then it dropped away. The camera was turned sideways, pointing down the hall. David realized Xander had set it on top of the stepladder while he went to get the screws and screwdriver. Xander moved away from the camera and squatted in front of a box.

David picked up the PSP. The game was over, his team's score in the toilet. He turned it off. He'd rather be kicking his ball around outside than doing this.

Xander walked toward the monitor, screws in one hand, the tool in the other. The camera jerked and bounced around, then settled on the image David had seen a minute before: the hallway of doors over Xander's shoulder.

Xander said something. In the few seconds before Toria could relay it, David tried to guess what it was:
Is the dog dead? I'm a raft? Want to fight?

“Is that right?” Toria yelled.

Oooo . . . not even close.

“Yeah, perfect!” he said.

Xander moved a screw to the mount behind the camera. The screwdriver came into view, then disappeared from the frame.

David smiled at the faces Xander was making as he tried to get the screw into the wall. Xander's tongue appeared in the corner of his mouth, and David outright laughed. He yelled, “Ha-ha-ha!”

“What?” Toria called.

“Pass it along,” David said. “Ha-ha-ha!”

He heard her call out to Xander. On the monitor, Xander's eyebrows came together. He moved his mouth, a word David could read:
What?
Toria repeated it. On the monitor, Xander said something else—too long for David even to guess at.

Toria yelled, “He said knock it off or you can put the cam-era up.”

Xander looked down, probably getting another screw. Then his brother was back to twisting his hand over the screwdriver and making funny faces.

David snickered. A burst of static obscured Xander's face, then scattered away. As it did, David's heart turned to stone. He leaned forward and grabbed the side edges of the monitor.

Over Xander's shoulder, the camera showed the hallway running back to the far wall, which had been, until seconds ago, cloaked in shadows. Now light filled that space. Though David could not see it, he knew only one thing could have caused such brightness: way back at the end of the hall, a door had opened. The light flickered, as though something was moving through it, casting a shadow.

The big man stepped into the hallway.

Phemus!

His bald head almost scraped the ceiling. Wiry hair burst from his face and hung down to his powerful chest. Even in the camera's poor resolution, David could make out the scars that crisscrossed his flesh, the smudges of dirt, the glistening sweat. A raggedy pelt hung from his waist. The man swung his head around to squint back into the light, as though debating about pulling the door closed.

David jumped up, sending his chair clattering to the floor behind him. “Xander!” he screamed. He spun, intending to bolt out of the room, but the corner of his eye caught some-thing on the monitor, and he turned back.

The big man reversed a step as
another
man came out of the room. This one was similar to Phemus: a little smaller—still large—with a full head of long, shaggy hair. He peered into Phemus's face as if for instructions.

“Xan—Xander!” David yelled. He stumbled backward, pivoted around, and crashed into Toria, who was running into the room. They both went down. David's cast cracked against the floor beside his sister's head, sending a bolt of pain shooting into his shoulder and neck.

“David!” Toria grunted under him, pushing him off.

David scrambled to get his feet under him. He screamed, “Xander! Get out of there! Xander!”

As he rose, Toria pushed herself into a sitting position. “What are you—” she said, then let loose with her own piercing scream.

She was looking at the monitor. David snapped his head toward it. A third man had emerged from the room. Like the others, he wore only a tattered pelt. But he was shorter, and so skinny his ribs pushed through his skin. He had splotchy hair springing out from his scalp like water from a colander. He bounced up and down, looking from Phemus to the other man like a pet hungry for attention.

Toria wrapped both of her arms around David's leg. He yanked on it, but her grip was a bear trap.

“Toria, let go!”

On the monitor, Xander was still making faces, cranking on the screwdriver.

“Turn around, Xander!” David screamed.
Can't you hear them! Why can't you hear them?

He wondered if the house was messing with the sounds, intentionally keeping Xander from hearing the people behind him.

His brother plucked a screw from his lips and brought his hand past the camera's lens. Over his shoulder, the three men turned their heads. They spotted Xander and began lumbering toward him.

CHAPTER

twenty -seven

W
EDNESDAY, 12:06 P.M.

David turned, twisting his leg free from Toria's grasp. He stumbled into the hall and darted for the secret door. It was closed. He slammed against the wall beside it. He tapped the edge of the door with his fingers, but it didn't pop out as it usually did.

“They're getting closer!” Toria yelled from the MCC. She ran up behind him. “Hurry, Dae!”

“I am!” He pounded on the door. It wouldn't budge. “Why'd you close it?”

“I didn't!”

This house!

He looked around, didn't see anything he could use to pry open the door or break it down. Then he remembered and ran into the MCC. Propped against the wall, just inside the door, was the toy rifle both he and Xander had used as a club. He snatched it up.

Frantic as he was to get to Xander, he just
had to
glance at the monitor. His brother was still squinting past the lens, messing with screws and the screwdriver. Behind him, the two larger men were trudging shoulder to shoulder toward him. The smaller, animal-like man was hopping up and down behind them, his eyes wild. In a flash, he tried to squeeze between one of the other men and the wall, but the space was too tight. They had crossed half the distance to Xander.

David sprinted into the hallway. Toria was beating her fists against the secret door.

“Move!” David said. He swung the gun's stock into the wall, blasting a divot of wallpaper and plaster from it. “Xander!”

He didn't have time to tear down the whole wall, but he definitely had the energy and determination. He stepped back and rammed the barrel of the rifle into the wall near the latch. The muzzle made a half-inch-deep hole. He had hit a wooden stud.

He pulled back, rammed again. This time the barrel plunged through up to the trigger. David began rotating the stock with both hands as though turning a handle on a butter churn.

The hole in the wall opened up around the barrel. Plaster fell away. When the opening was the diameter of a dinner plate, he pushed the rifle all the way through. It clattered to the floor on the other side.

If this doesn't work, Xander's dead
.

David reached his hand through and found the latch. It wouldn't budge. Maybe his pounding had jammed it.

He pulled his arm out and stuck his face to the hole. “Xander!”

“What?”

“Run! Look behind you!”

“What are you—
”
Then he screamed, a sound that pierced David's heart like a spear.

Metal rattled and crashed. David realized the ladder had fallen.

“Xander!”

David felt the latch again. He forced himself to slow down, to feel it and picture it. He realized that the lever was pushed too far forward. He pulled it backward, then tugged it down. The wall sprang open. He hooked his fingers around it and pulled.

“Toria,” he said, “make sure this door doesn't shut again.”

His brother's screams continued. David ran through the second doorway and pounded up the stairs. He hit the land-ing and spun into the hallway.

Xander was ten feet in, blood smeared across his fore-head. Phemus clutched his ankle and was dragging him down the hall. The other two men lurched in to grab at him. But Xander had hold of the aluminum stepladder and was wielding it the way a lion tamer uses a chair to hold back the man-eaters. He was flat on his back, hefting the ladder up, shoving the top of it at his attackers.

David ran forward. He grabbed the ladder and pulled. “Xander, let go! I've got better leverage than you!”

“David!” Xander released his grip.

David pulled the ladder back, yelled—because he had to say something, had to release the knot of thoughts pressuring his brain—“Let go of my brother!” and jammed the ladder's top brace into Phemus's face.

Blood sprayed out of the man's nose. He stumbled back, an expression of complete shock on his face.

“Ha!” David screamed, as though he'd scored the winning point in a video game.

The smaller, spastic intruder—David's frenzied mind instantly tagged this guy “Baboon Man”—stretched to grab the leg Phemus had lost.

Xander kicked the hand. It pulled away, then reached out again. Another kick. The hand retreated, reached again.

David reared back with the ladder and heaved it forward with every bit of energy he had in him. It struck Baboon Man in the side of the skull with a loud
crack!
The man's head snapped sideways, and he reeled away.

The other two—Phemus, bloody from David's first strike, and the one who was almost as large—lunged for Xander.

Xander bent his knees, placed the treads of his sneakers on the carpet, and pushed himself backward, toward the landing.

David jabbed the ladder at the men. It struck Phemus's chest. David may as well have rammed it into a brick wall: the man didn't budge. The shock of hitting him reverberated along the ladder and through David's bones. His broken arm throbbed.

Xander pushed past him on the floor.

“Go!” David yelled. “Go!”

Xander flipped over and clambered on his hands and knees toward the landing. He yelled, “I'm clear, Dae! Get out of there.”

David lunged with the ladder.

This time he caught Baboon Man in the chest. The man
oophed!
and stumbled back again.

Phemus grabbed the ladder and ripped it out of David's hands. He flung it into the wall, smashing one of the wall lamps. David witnessed the briefest flash of satisfaction on the man's scruffy face.

David spun and darted for Xander, who was pulling himself up against the door frame. The brothers collided. Their legs tangled, and they fell onto the landing.

The men in the hallway lurched forward, their arms out-stretched. It occurred to David that Xander would already have a zombie movie in mind to describe this later—if there
was
a later. David flung himself down the stairs, bringing Xander with him. They tumbled over the first steps, grunting, groaning. Then David found himself going down backwards, his butt bouncing painfully against each step. He raised his cast for balance, and Xander's forehead flew into it. They both yelped in pain. They reached the bottom, and Xander flipped over David, crashing into the wall.

Above them, the men pushed through the doorway, their eyes huge and insane.

David scrambled up, and he saw Phemus take the lead, lumbering slowly down each step. His girth spanned the width of the stairwell. Baboon Man leaped and pulled him-self up behind Phemus as though he were scaling a wall. His fingers were bent talons, digging into the big man's flesh at the shoulders and on top of his head, trying to propel him-self over.

Xander grabbed David's collar and yanked him through the doorway. Both brothers grabbed for the door at the same time. Swinging the door around, they tripped over each other. Only their iron grips on the door's edge kept them from spilling to the floor.

Through the opening, David saw that Baboon Man—scrawny, scraggly, jittery—had gotten himself completely onto Phemus's shoulder. For a moment he was perched there, squatting like a gargoyle, his wicked grin trembling over his knees. Then he leaped off, a screeching beast of prey. Arms outstretched, mouth impossibly wide, he flew at David.

The door slammed shut. The impact behind it knocked it open again, flinging David into the wall behind him. Air burst out of his lungs. He inhaled, got nothing, inhaled. He slid down the wall.

Xander was pushing on the door, but Baboon Man had col-lapsed onto the floor, halfway through. He wasn't moving. Just out cold.

David gasped for breath that wouldn't come.

Xander grabbed him. “It's okay, Dae. Just got the wind knocked out of you. It'll come back.” He hoisted him up. “Toria!” he called. “Help Dae. Get him out of here.”

David felt Toria's small hands hook themselves into his armpits from behind. It was just enough support to keep him on his feet, and he started backpedaling through the secret door. He watched Xander try to push the unconscious Baboon Man out of the way of the door.

The guy groaned, lifted his head, tried to push himself up.

Xander kicked him in the head.

Baboon Man's hand shot out and seized Xander's ankle.

“Wait,” David wheezed at Toria. “Let go. I'm okay.” He pulled free, stooped, and picked up the toy rifle.

Something crashed into the other side of the wall—David imagined Phemus picking up speed on the stairs and nailing the wall with arms the size of battering rams. Plaster dust filled the small space between the walls as the entire wall at the base of the stairs broke free from the ceiling and fell.