Long, ragged nails scratched at her skin, slicing into her shoulder. She shrugged them away and kept running.
“Get them,” one of the cellar’s inhabitants screeched.
“Don’t let them get away.”
“They’re fast,” another called. “My legs aren’t as long as theirs.”
“You won’t have any fucking legs if you let them get away, ’cause we’ll eat those instead.”
An impossibly obese hulk loomed over her, wheezing with exertion. Heather dodged it easily, but not before glimpsing two pale, ponderous breasts swaying amidst mounds of sweaty, jiggling flesh. It was female—and naked. The woman reached for her with cold, clammy hands. Her skin had the consistency of wax. Heather shuddered in revulsion.
“Javier? Where are you?”
In response, something tittered in the darkness.
“Here,” he called, his voice distant. “Heather?”
Another mutant lunged for her as she followed Javier’s voice, realizing too late that she was fleeing right into the midst of their attackers. Heather was out of range of the kitchen lights now, but the thing was close enough that she could make out some of its features, even in the darkness. It had a face and snout like a baboon, and its short, squat body was mostly hairless. Its eyes were definitely human, and they smoldered with rage. She darted to the left, out of reach of her pursuer, and then dodged to the right again. Her heart pounded in her chest. She breathed through her mouth to avoid the stench roiling off the creatures.
She thought she heard the belt crack up ahead, followed by a cry of pain. Heather ran in that direction, determined not to get separated from Javier. The ground was uneven and sloped downward. Even in the darkness, she could feel the descent increasing drastically. She winced as what felt like sharp, jagged stones poked her bare feet, but she shoved past the pain, not daring to slow down.
The sounds slowly dimmed, then ceased, but she kept running. She had no way of knowing whether she was still being chased. This part of the basement—if she was even still in the basement—was pitch-black, and she didn’t want to risk stopping to pull out her cell phone. She heard no footsteps behind her, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t still there, lurking, waiting to attack. Without stopping, Heather instinctively glanced over her shoulder, forgetting that she probably wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. As she did, her foot came down in something wet, and she slipped, bouncing off a wall. Her hands shot out to break her fall, and sharp rocks sliced into her palms. Sitting up, Heather gasped, but managed not to scream.
She crouched there, cradling her hands in her lap. She could feel her blood trickling down her palms but couldn’t tell how bad the cuts were. She wondered if her feet were lacerated as well. They hurt, but she didn’t know whether that was from the earlier wounds or brand-new ones. She didn’t know how badly she was injured. She didn’t know where her boyfriend or her friends were. She didn’t know where her pursuers were. All Heather knew was that she was suddenly alone in the darkness.
“Javier?” she whispered, her voice quavering. “Kerri?”
There was no answer from either. Heather stood and listened, but the only sound she heard was her own harsh breathing. If Javier or Kerri were still nearby, then they were unwilling—or unable—to respond. She glanced around in the darkness, no longer sure of where she was or which direction she’d come from. She’d lost her bearings during her tumble. Far off in the distance, she spotted a tiny dot of illumination, and after a moment, she determined that it was the kitchen lights shining down into the basement. But it was so far away—as if the cellar were larger than the house above it. Maybe it was. Or maybe she’d run into a cave attached to the basement or something. She couldn’t tell. Her hands began to burn. Deciding to risk it, Heather fumbled for her cell phone, intent on at least examining her wounds. She patted her pockets, felt the reassuring bulge of the tiny cell phone, but then decided against using it, after all. What if one of the killers heard it or saw it? Darkness and silence were preferable to that.
“Kerri?”
Nothing.
Pouting, Heather tried to figure out what to do next. She couldn’t stay where she was, no matter how strong her urge was to curl up into a ball and just hide herself away. In the darkness, she had nothing but her hands and her sense of hearing to guide her. Both seemed useless right now. She couldn’t risk using the phone, so what did that leave her with? She patted the floor, wincing in pain as her cuts brushed against the rough surface. Eventually she located the wall and pressed herself against it. The cold, clammy surface felt good against her skin. She rested there, catching her breath and weighing her options again. Javier and Kerri had to be somewhere up ahead. They
had
to be, because the alternative was far too terrifying to consider. What if Javier had left her here? What if Kerri had wound up with Brett when whatever had happened to him back there in the darkness—something dreadful, by the sound of it—occurred?
What the hell would she do if everyone else was dead?
Somewhere off to her right, she heard a slight scuffling noise.
“Javier,” she tried again. “Is that you?”
This time she got a response.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty …”
The voice didn’t belong to Javier. Indeed, it barely sounded like it belonged to anything human. It was harsh and ragged, the words slurred, and there was an unmistakable hint of maniacal glee in the tones. Heather covered her mouth with her hands and tried not to make any noise. Despite her best efforts, a pitiful whine slipped past her lips and fingers.
“It’s okay, kitty,” the thing in the dark responded. “Come on, now. If you come out now, I’ll twist off your head and make it real quick, so you don’t feel it when we eat you.”
The voice sounded like it was all around her. Heather crouched low to the floor, ignoring the pain in her hands, and concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths and remaining motionless. She inhaled, exhaled, and forced herself to calm down. A few more breaths and she was clearheaded again—still terrified, but not paralyzed by fear.
She heard shuffling footsteps, as if the hunter was dragging one foot. It was coming from her left. Then she heard the belt crack. It sounded very loud in the darkness. Her spirits soared. It was Javier. She knew he wouldn’t abandon her.
“Javier?” Her cry echoed in the chamber.
“No. I’m Scug. Was Javier the guy with the belt? ’Cause it’s mine now. And you are too. You’re going to be my new suit of clothes.”
Screaming, Heather sprang to her feet and fled. Laughter bubbled up behind her, nipping at her heels. The belt whistled through the air again, striking the wall. Flinching, Heather kept running. In the darkness, she never noticed when the tunnel forked, veering off in several different directions.
***
Kerri fled, plunging headlong into the blackness, heedless of the misshapen forms grasping at her from all sides. Heather vanished in front of her, swallowed up by the shadows. Brett screamed behind her, but when she turned to see what was happening, a tall, lanky form loped toward her, swaying from side to side. It wasn’t Noigel—this attacker was too skinny to be the murderous giant. As it drew closer, she noticed a rusty hacksaw in its hand. Kerri turned and ran, forgetting all about Brett. She pushed past two figures and ran straight into a third. Both Kerri and the creature tumbled to the floor. She sprang up again, kicked the fallen mutant in what she assumed was its face, and continued on. She’d managed to hold on to her club all this time, but had forgotten about it. She swung it as another shadowy figure lunged at her. The club vibrated with the impact and the nail at the end of it drove deep into the creature’s brain. When Kerri tried to tug the weapon free, it remained stuck in the corpse’s head. She let go of it and ran.
Something squeaked to her left, and tiny, childlike fingers clawed at her thigh, trying to grasp her jeans. She lashed out with her hand, struck flesh, and heard the thing grunt. The fingers slipped away and she ran again. She darted to the right, then the left, dashing aimlessly through the wide-open space, seeking only to avoid being caught. A multitude of footsteps pounded along behind her, accompanied by a chorus of grunts, gasps, howls, and laughter. Something whistled through the air and struck her back hard. Kerri cried out, but didn’t slow down. She heard the object—a rock, perhaps—clatter to the floor. Two more whizzed by in the darkness, close enough that she could feel the air shift at their passing.
Kerri swerved again, changing direction. She stumbled around and gasped, her hands touching nothing, no one, her security lost in the darkness. She heard a cry of pain, but couldn’t tell which direction it had come from or who had made it. Brett? Heather? Javier? One of the things? She ran on, her hands held out in front of her, deflecting the walls as she drifted too far to the right and then too far in the other direction, overcompensating. Her foot came down in a pool of something cold and wet. She heard a splash, and then her sneaker was soaked. Her socks squelched around her toes with each step she took.
Her breaths hitched in her throat and chest and Kerri felt the tears start. Not that they mattered in the black pit where she was running blind. It was too much. All of it. How had the evening gone so horribly wrong? How had all this happened? This morning, she’d been thinking about college and her relationship with Tyler. Now Tyler was dead and college …
… college was probably something she’d never live to experience.
Breathless, she slowed her pace but did not stop. Images of Tyler and Steph came to her again, unbidden. She could hide from her pursuers in the darkness, but when it came to her own memories, there was nowhere to go, no way to hide. She pushed thoughts of Tyler and Stephanie away, thinking instead of her family. She was four years old, and her father’s face wavered, reminding her that there was never a right time to be stupid as he picked up the shattered remnants of the glass she’d dropped. He’d swatted her hand briefly, but that was nothing in comparison to the look of disapproval on his face. He was a wonderful man, gentle and warm and loving but never one to forgive stupidity or ignorance. She wondered how he’d react to the situation she was in now. Would he tell her that it was her own fault—that she should have listened to him when he’d said time and time again that Tyler was no good and that he’d only lead to trouble? Of course, Daddy had probably been thinking about her ending up pregnant or in a car crash, or maybe even in jail. She was pretty sure that even her practical, no-nonsense father couldn’t have imagined that her relationship with East Petersburg’s bad boy would lead to his daughter being trapped in an inner-city slaughter house and hunted like a rabbit by a bunch of mutated freaks.
Kerri was startled from her ruminations as her fingertips brushed against a wall. She stopped running and listened for sounds of pursuit, but the chamber was now eerily quiet. Could their attackers still be out there, hiding in the darkness, lying in wait? Were the bastards just toying with them? Making them think they had a chance at escape before finally jumping out and killing them the way they had Tyler and Steph? Kerri wiped her tears away and squeezed her eyes shut. Her legs ached and her lungs burned. She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. She suddenly didn’t care whether they found her. She needed to rest.
She leaned against the wall. Slick, wet clay soaked through her dirty jeans. Despite the danger of her situation, Kerri was intrigued. She explored the wall with her hands, running them along it. She’d been expecting stone blocks. That’s what the cellar walls had been constructed of. She’d noticed them when they first entered. Instead, rough, wooden planks formed the wall in this section of the underground warren. Wide gaps between the boards let the wet dirt spill out in a thick sludge. This close to the wall, the air was thick with a deep scent of stagnation. It aggravated her throat. She tried to stifle her coughs, not wanting to give away her location, and moved a little to the right. Both of her feet came down in another puddle. This one was wider and deeper than the last, and she clasped her arms around her shoulders and shivered as cold water soaked through both shoes. The sensation just made everything worse.
“Shit.”
Her voice was very small, barely even audible to her own ears, but something else heard it. One of their pursuers howled from nearby. She heard it sniffing like a dog. Kerri dropped to her knees and started crawling through the wet clay. It squirted between her fingers as she slunk away. Gone was the basement floor. This was—somewhere else. She didn’t know where. A cave, perhaps. The water was everywhere, and her hands became slicked with mud.
She felt the ground begin to slope under her, slightly at first, then suddenly steeper, and she had to struggle to keep from sliding downward headfirst. Then the ground changed, and she did indeed begin to slide. The soft, slick mud was still there, but her palms didn’t sink in as much as they had before, and she felt the texture of wood under her hands again. Kerri stopped her forward slide and felt along the wood. If it was hard enough that she might be able to use it as a club if she could pry some loose. That would at least make up for the one she had lost earlier. Her hands shook from nervous exhaustion and adrenaline alike as she felt the edges of the plank and tried to yank it loose. A quick exploration revealed that it wasn’t a single board, but several lengths nailed together. She kept digging, her fingers pulling the mud away from around the wood, searching desperately for something that she could use to defend herself—anything was better than nothing.