by Jeremy Bates
We were about an hour along the trail when the accident happened. I was zipping down a gradual incline, getting air on small jumps, glancing back to see if Max was doing the same. She wasn’t; her tires remained firmly on the ground as she tackled each peak and trough. Even so, about halfway down, she picked up too much speed and lost control. Her front tire caught a rut, then hit a root. Her handlebars jerked, and she crashed through the thick vegetation for about twenty feet before plowing into a large tree. She suffered a greenstick fracture in her left leg, though all we knew right then was that her leg was bloody and bruised. She was crying, as much out of fear as pain, I suspected, but eventually I coaxed her onto my back. I must have carried her for two kilometers before we emerged from the park behind a 7-Eleven. The employee on shift called our dad, who picked us up and took Max to the hospital.
The memory left as abruptly as it came, and the stone hallway refocused around me. However, I must have gotten a second wind, because I was now moving at a good trot and arrived at the foot ladder a minute later. I took a moment to catch my breath, then gripped the ladder’s uprights and shifted my feet onto the rungs. I climbed one step—and hesitated. I looked into the black shaft below me.
No, I thought. Danièle was dead. She had to be. I heard her screams. They were the screams of someone having a dagger plunged into their chest. She was dead.
But what if she wasn’t?
She was. Had to be.
But what if she isn’t? You left her once, you didn’t have a choice, but you have a choice now.
“Fuck,” I mumbled.
I stabbed out my torch on the wall and started down.
Chapter 77
DANIÈLE
Danièle’s left hand felt ten times its original size and pulsed with electrifying pain, as if it had been pricked with a thousand different needles. The skin on it was already bubbling with large, clear blisters, especially on the palm and between the fingers. She wondered if she’d ever be able to use it again, but that was only a passing thought, because she had much more immediate concerns.
Like the four zombie-bitches standing watch over her.
Two were overweight, one average, one skinny, though they all resembled each other. This wasn’t surprising given they were related through inbreeding. Their ragtag clothing was filthy and torn, and their elbows were black, stained permanently, Danièle presumed, with dirt. These observations, combined with their undead stench, made her wonder whether they had ever bathed in their lives.
They watched Danièle, barely blinking. Their eyes shone with a dull luster—dull but not dumb, for they were cognizant enough to understand Zolan’s orders to keep guard over her and Katja. They wouldn’t even let her soothe her hand in the cool water of the pool. When she attempted to stand to do this, the skinny bitch shoved her roughly back to her rear.
Katja sat quietly next to her, staring at the ground for the most part, like a kid who knew she was in deep trouble and didn’t want to make it any worse.
Danièle tried not to think about Will, but it was a futile attempt. She still couldn’t believe he had abandoned her the way he had. She was so furious with him she almost wanted Zolan to catch him…almost. Because she knew she couldn’t blame him. If their positions had been reversed, she would have done the same as he had—
Will emerged from the shadows like a wraith.
Were her eyes playing tricks on her?
Could that really be him?
Yes! Because Katja, gasping in excitement, saw him too. Yet before Danièle could tell her to shut up, she blurted, “Will!”
The four women whirled around, amazingly quick for such despondent creatures. They shrieked and raised their bone-weapons…and everything that followed happened very fast.
Danièle rocked forward, grabbed the ankle of the bitch closest to her with her good hand, and yanked. The woman lost her balance but didn’t go down. Hopping on one leg, she attempted to kick free. Danièle tugged again, this time dropping her. She landed on her chest. Danièle scrambled onto her back. Her body, wiry and powerful, thrashed violently.
“Katja!” Danièle shouted. “Help!”
Chapter 78
KATJA
Katja didn’t know what to do; she was frozen with conflicting loyalties. Danièle wanted her to help attack Toni. But she couldn’t do that! Toni was her aunt. She’d helped raise Katja from birth.
Toni twisted and knocked Danièle off her.
Screeching, she raised her bone.
Katja leapt forward and grabbed the shaft, just above where she held it.
Toni whirled toward her, hissing her name.
Katja tugged the bone free and stumbled backward.
Chapter 79
I overwhelmed the two fat women with brute force, smashing through their raised femurs with mine and landing critical blows to their skulls. The skinny one, however, got behind me and leapt onto my back, her arms and legs locking around me. She bit me above the collarbone, tearing out a chunk of flesh.
Bellowing, I dropped the femur, reached over my shoulders, grabbed her with both hands by the greasy hair, and launched her into the wall. She hit it hard but recovered quickly, pushing herself to her hands and knees. I drove a foot into the back of her neck and heard a popping crack. She expelled a drilling shriek that splintered into something inhuman. She dropped to her chest and jerked her head back and forth, still shrieking, though unable to move her body from the neck down.
Chapter 80
KATJA
Katja knew Romy must be badly hurt because of the sounds she was making, but she didn’t understand why her aunt was just lying there. Nevertheless, if she didn’t quiet down, Katja’s father was surely going to hear her and know they were escaping. He would come back with the others and catch everyone again.
Understanding this, Katja rushed beside Will and grabbed Romy’s long hair in her hands.
“Get out of the way, Katja!” Will growled. He looked as angry as she’d ever seen anybody, and she knew he was going to stomp on Romy’s head the way he’d stomped on Hann’s.
Katja ignored him and began dragging Romy toward the water. She feared Will would stop her, but he was already turning his attention to the struggle between Danièle and Toni.
“Katja!” Romy hissed between her shrieks. “Hilf mir!”
Her German wasn’t very good, not like Katja’s father’s or Katja’s herself, she only knew a few basic words, and they were usually garbled by her pronunciation, but what she said now was easy enough to understand: “Help me.”
Katja kept dragging her toward the water.
“Hilf mir!”
“I am!” she shouted.
Suddenly the cool water shimmered around Katja’s ankles. She backed up a few more steps until it was up to her knees.
Romy was shaking her head wildly, but she still wasn’t moving her body at all. Her rounded eyes blazed and she hissed, “Katja—”
Katja released her hair and her head sank below the surface and her shrieks turned into bubbles.
“Go to sleep,” she said softly.
I didn’t know what Katja wanted with the skinny woman, but I didn’t care; the woman was a quadriplegic and no longer a threat. I turned to Danièle, who was grappling with the last remaining woman. I snatched up the femur and went to help. Danièle flipped the woman onto her back, pinning her to the ground.
Holding the bone with a wide grip, I pressed the middle of its length against the woman’s throat and leaned onto it, crushing the cartilage in her windpipe and depriving her of air. She writhed and gasped and spat until she went limp.
“Will!” Danièle said when it was over, throwing her arms around me. We folded onto the rock together.
I couldn’t believe she was in my arms, safe, alive.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into her hair, squeezing her tighter.
“You came back.”
“I left.”
“You came back.”
“Shit, Danièle,” I sai
d, noticing her hand.
“It is okay.”
I sat up, easing her aside. “Zolan’s still looking for me, he’s going to come back. We have to go.” I glanced around for Katja through a film of blurry fatigue. She was by the pool, crouched next to a pair of legs that extended from the water. Had she drowned her own aunt? “Katja…?”
She looked at me. “She isn’t going to wake up, is she?”
“No.”
She began to cry.
“Katja, I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of this—”
“I didn’t either!”
I glanced at Danièle. She shook her head. I got up and went to Katja and pulled her to her feet and shushed her and stroked her hair.
“It’s almost over,” I said softly.
She sobbed, and her body trembled.
“Can you climb the ladder?” I asked her.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You need to.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Just climb the ladder.”
“I want this to end.”
“Can you climb the ladder?”
“I…” She sniffed, nodded. “Okay.”
“Faster this time?”
She nodded again against my chest.
Danièle had collected one of the discarded yet still-burning torches and joined us at the pool. She waded in, apparently intent on swimming back through the submerged passage. The mere thought of doing so made me shiver.
“Forget it,” I told her. “I can’t do that swim again. I won’t make it.”
“We have to. We cannot stay here—”
“We’re going to take the ladder.”
“The ladder!” she exclaimed. “That is the way Zolan went!”
“No—I got off it before I reached the top, so did Zolan, but it kept going up, through the rock. It might lead back to all those tunnels beneath Val-de-Grâce. We could easily lose Zolan in them, and we’d be closer to a way out.”
Danièle frowned, contemplating this. “And if you are wrong, and it leads nowhere?” she said.
“I can’t do that swim again,” I said simply.
Chapter 81
I ascended the ladder first, carrying the torch, followed by Katja, then Danièle. At the lateral hallway, I half expected to find Zolan and the others, waiting to jump me, but it was all clear, and for the first time in…I don’t know how long…I felt the nascence of hope.
We were going to do this.
We were going to escape.
These thoughts spurred me on, and I didn’t realize I had left Katja and Danièle behind until I glanced down and all I could see was blackness.
“Katja?” I called.
“Coming!” Her voice was small and scared. Then she reached the torchlight. From my birds-eye angle only her forehead and eyes were illuminated—those captivating eyes of hers. Then the shadows covering her lower face peeled away, and a sadness welled inside me.
What was going to happen to her? I wondered. She thought she was going to be living with me and going on picnics and shopping for dresses. The truth was…what? The media would have a field day with her, that’s what. She’d become a modern-day carnival sideshow. She wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without attracting stares of pity and revulsion. She’d probably have to wear one of those burn masks to hide her face. She would never find love, never start a family. She would be doomed to a life of loneliness—what, ironically, I had naively believed I was saving her from.
No, that wasn’t true. I never believed I was saving her from anything.
I had simply been using her.
She stopped at my feet. “Am I doing okay, Will?”
“You’re doing great, Katja,” I said.
Twenty or so rungs later the shaft came to an end. One moment nothing was above me, the next some sort of grate. With a sinking heart I placed my hand against the iron bars, positive they were going to be welded in place, and pushed.
They lifted away.
The smell took me back to elementary school: wood polish and industrial cleaners and disinfectants. I turned in a circle and saw I was in some kind of small closet/office. Against one wall was a chair and desk on which sat a cup of pens and a stack of paper and a gooseneck lamp. The rest of the walls were obscured by shelves crowded with janitorial supplies.
Katja poked her head through the hole and her eyes widened in wonderment. I helped her out, then Danièle, who was right behind her.
“Oh God!” Danièle said, covering her mouth with her good hand. “We made it. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Will! We made it.”
I managed a nod. This felt too surreal. If I spoke, I feared I would break the spell and wake up back in the catacombs.
I went to the door. Turning the handle popped the push-lock. The door opened to a long hallway—one with waxed floors and painted walls and fluorescent lights set into ceiling fixtures.
Katja squeezed past me and gasped. “Is this Paris?”
“Almost, Katja,” I said. “Almost.”
I snuffed the torch out on the floor and left it there, and we followed the hallway past several closed doors to a staircase. We ascended the steps and emerged in a room filled with a range of display cases lit by dimmed spotlights.
“Where are we, Danièle?” I said.
“It must be Val-de-Grâce.”
“I thought Val-de-Grâce was a military hospital?”
“Originally it was a church. Then a convent was added to it. Then the convent was converted into a military hospital. Then a modern military hospital was built on the same grounds, and the old one was turned into a medical museum. So that is where we must be.” She went to the closest display case. “Yes, see—I am right.”
Katja and I joined her. On the other side of the glass was a primitive prosthetic hand that would have required the user to change the attachment—fork, spoon, tweezers—every time he or she undertook a different task.
“What is that?” Katja asked.
“A hand,” I told her.
“A hand?”
“People who lost theirs stuck that on their arm.” To Danièle I said, “Which way’s the exit, do you think?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
We went in an arbitrary direction but didn’t get far before Katja stopped at another display case.
“Katja,” I said, impatient, “there’s no time.”
But she didn’t move. When I realized what the exhibit was my stomach dropped. She was staring fixedly at several wax casts of human faces—those deformed by war injuries and those same ones put back together with reconstructive surgery. Katja pointed to one face in particular whose deformities bore an uncanny resemblance to her own. “What happened to him?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She indicated the post-surgery cast. “Is that what he looked like before?”
“No, that’s what he looked like after.”
“After?”
“There are medical procedures today…they can help…”
“Can they make me look like you?”
“I…I don’t know…”
She frowned. “What happened to me?”
“Your father never told you?”
“He said my nose and lips fell off because of the radiation. But if there is no radiation, that can’t be true.”
“Will, hurry!” Danièle called softly. She was twenty feet ahead of us, beckoning us to follow.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I told Katja. “But we have to keep going. We’re not supposed to be here, and we need to find help.”
We passed a smorgasbord of other medical displays: colorful faience apothecary jars, paintings of medics at work on the battlefield (which made me think of M.A.S.H. circa 1814), scale models with old-fashioned dolls taking the place of patients, even a full-size reconstruction of a surgical anatomy lesson.
Finally we passed through a large wooden door and entered a long wide hallway. One wall was lined with marble
busts and memorial tablets dedicated to medics killed in the field, the other a series of arched windows that overlooked a cloister and formal garden, though it was night and not much outside was visible.
We were halfway down the hallway when the door we were headed toward opened and a man dressed head to toe in black appeared.
Chapter 82
The military guard started at our sudden appearance before drawing his pistol and pointing it at us. “Who are you?” he demanded in French. “What are you doing here? The museum is closed.”
“We were attacked,” Danièle said. “We need help.”
The guard came closer. He squinted at Katja’s face and winced. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She was attacked.”
“Turn around. All of you. Hands on your heads.”
Danièle obeyed. Will and Katja followed her lead.
“What’s happening?” Katja asked softly.
“Just do as he says.”
Danièle heard a burst of static. The guard reported a break-in and requested backup. Then: “Who attacked you?”
“A man,” Danièle said. “His name is Zolan.”
“Is he here with you?”
“I do not know. He attacked us in the catacombs.”
“The catacombs?”
“We escaped up a ladder. It led us here.”
“To the museum?”
