by Ilsa J. Bick
No time for the stairs. Dropping to a sit, Tom threw his legs over the edge of the gap in the kitchen floor, then slid all the way through. No more than two feet high, the crawl space was virtually pitch black except for thin stringers of light dashing through chinks in the floor. The air reeked of mildew and the eye-watering stench of dead mice. Tongue cringing from the clog of decay, he took small sips through his teeth as he slithered, on his belly, over cold earth and deeper into the crawl space. The smell of rot and, now, a septic system desperately in need of emptying. The people who’d lived here must’ve kept on crapping until their toilets overflowed.
Far enough. Turning onto his side, he faced the way he’d come. Light glimmered through the gap. If they looked, they wouldn’t see him so long as he remained still. Then he remembered that Chuckies saw very well in the dark. Either way, if it came down to a fight, he thought he had a chance. Even with Jed’s Bravo in its scabbard, there was a foot of clearance between his Uzi and the underbelly of the house, plenty of room to roll.
Take out anything that comes through the gap. He tucked the silenced Uzi to his chest, business end trained on that wedge of silver light. After that, he would have to be fast. The remaining kid could shoot down, but both boys were carrying bolt-actions. He fingered the Uzi’s selector to full auto. Shoot up, really spray it, and then—
Directly over his head, the floorboards creaked. A soft screeee. More steps, the gauzy light rippling as the boy moved across the kitchen. He heard more thumps as the second boy came down the front hall. Cringing back, Tom tried making himself as small as possible—
And felt a hand on his shoulder.
99
A scream surged up Tom’s throat, crashed over his tongue, then flattened against the wall of his teeth. Tucking, he rolled away, once, twice, then brought the silenced Uzi to bear. Just before it was too late, in the split second before his finger tightened on the trigger and sprayed gunfire he could not take back, he saw what he’d missed before, because his eyes hadn’t adjusted and he’d been focused on the gap, not what waited at his back, in the dark.
The Chucky who’d decided on the crawl space as his personal meat locker had been a busy, busy boy. In the gray gloaming, Tom thought there might be as many as four bodies, but certainly two, because of the heads. (Pro forma for an accurate count at any bomb scene: forget heads. Heads pop like corks from champagne. Count left feet.) The soft, fleshy parts—eyes, noses, lips, tongues—were gone. The heads stared with wide, black-eyed wonder. One body was being systematically consumed from the waist up, the Chucky probably reaching in and scooping out all the good stuff before setting to work on the leaner rib meat. Alongside a half-gnawed thigh was a spool of colon in a neat cobra’s coil.
Jesus. Fear spidered down his neck. Either those boys were living here, or had dropped by to grab a quick snack. And here, I’ve saved them the trouble of hunting me down.
But they hadn’t figured out where he was yet. Sweat oozing over his temples, he rolled away from the grisly sight and readied the Uzi. He could still take them. If these Chuckies weren’t the only ones, or they lived nearby, he would have to make tracks pretty fast. Maybe this was why the village had pulled back: because there were too many Chuckies and no way to defend against them all. But then I should’ve spotted more, not just these two …
Then, he heard one of the boys: “Did you—”
“—hear that?” Jayden whispered.
From his place in the middle of the kitchen, Chris gave Jayden a slow nod, then put a finger to his lips. The sound had been brief, a kind of scurry like a rat or opossum. Or a raccoon. He tipped a look at the hole in the floor. From the smell, it seemed as if something had taken up residence. Maybe the cat, whose prints he’d spotted in back. His gaze inched from the hole to the hall beyond Jayden. In the weak light, he saw watery tread marks. Too late to ask Jayden if there’d been water before.
They’d stopped at Jess’s first. The house was empty, the girls’ bedrooms cleaned out. Yet the floors in Jess’s house were intact. This was not the case with two other houses on the same block that he knew had been occupied the last time he was in Rule. The only difference between those houses and Jess’s was that Jess had a root cellar and basement. Every house without one or the other showed similar damage: floorboards pried up or simply splintered with sledges and axes, open drawers, crap on the floor, broken dishes, the backs of cupboards staved in with hammers.
Now he swept his eyes over the wreckage that had been the Landrys’ kitchen. He thought he understood what had happened here. Whoever was left in Rule had gone around ripping up houses on footings to look in crawl spaces and behind walls for supplies that had been squirreled away. Then each house had been X’ed from the list.
Which means they’re pretty desperate. His gaze lingered on the pantry door, open just a crack. Things certainly had gone downhill here in a—
A faint squee and then a shuffle from directly overhead. At the sound, his eyes darted to the ceiling. He knew it. That ghostly flash of a face hadn’t been his imagination. Now, he was very glad he’d made Ellie wait behind the woodpile with Mina when the dog started getting antsy. Looking up at Jayden, he aimed a finger at the ceiling, then lifted his chin in the direction of the front hall. Nodding, Jayden turned a quiet about-face, hugged the left wall, and padded for the front door, with Chris only steps behind. Pausing at the bottom of the staircase, Jayden leaned in for a quick peek, then darted across to take up position in a doorway that led to a formal dining room. Moving past the understairs closet, Chris paused at the newel post, tapped his chest with a forefinger, then turned to aim at the stairs. He had a brief moment when he wondered just why he was bothering to clear this house, then considered that something had gotten under the dog’s skin and that the only good Changed was a dead one.
Unless it’s Lena, a small inner voice whispered. This is what you wanted, right? For her to follow? So what if she got here first?
No way, he thought right back. Lena knows Jess, not the Landrys. She has no reason to be in this house.
Unless she’s running an end around, the voice said. You drop north, so she circles, tracks you by scent, and meets you head-on.
Yes, but accomplishing what? He was overthinking this. Lena hadn’t shown herself at all in the last four days. He wondered now if she’d followed. Maybe he and Jayden weren’t enough of a draw.
Can’t worry about Lena now. He just hoped that whatever was up there wasn’t armed. Socking his rifle against his shoulder, he followed his weapon in a slow creep up the stairs, keeping to the right, away from any squeaky centers. The hall above opened right and left, and he jumped his eyes to the right corner and then the left, bringing his rifle around, clearing each slice of the pie. To his relief, he had wall to his back the whole way. Make it to the corner, clear left, then pivot, move to the right, clear that corner, then get the hell out of the stairway. What they did next depended on how many doors were open—
Something vaulted from a side table snugged against the far wall. Jerking right, he brought his rifle around, but he was off-balance. The cat barreled into his chest, dug in with its claws, spat, and then launched itself, using him as a springboard, to catapult itself the rest of the way down the steps. With a yelp, he jerked off a wild shot, then staggered as his heel snagged. He fell backward, his head cracking a step hard enough to bring on a shower of shooting stars, and then he was watching his boots whip past as he turned a somersault and caromed down the steps.
“Are you okay?” Jayden’s face, chalky with alarm, swam into view. “You could’ve broken your neck. Cat scared the hell out of me.”
“Uh,” Chris croaked. He could only lie a moment, listening to the bawl of his battered head. His right shoulder hurt where he’d collided with hardwood, but he thought it could’ve been worse. Propping himself up on his elbows, he gulped back against a swirl of vertigo, then made a face, worked his jaws, and spat out a gob of red foam. “Bit myself. Stupid cat.”
; “Just be glad that’s all it was.” Propping his own gun against the wall, Jayden helped him to his feet. “Can we get out of here? This place gives me the creeps, and it stinks. That cat’s probably dragged in all sorts of crap. It’s probably crapping all over the place.”
“Sure.” Shaking his head clear, he looked around and found his rifle, which had jumped from his hands to slide a few feet from the understairs closet. With a groan, he bent. “We should anyway,” he said, flicking the safety. “Even though we’re inside, someone might’ve heard the shot and come to check—”
At his back, the door to the understairs closet slammed open with a loud bang, and then Jayden was screaming, “Chris! Look out look out look—”
100
“This is dumb,” Ellie muttered, darkly, one hand hooked under Mina’s collar and the other clutching her Savage. Huddled by her side, Mina only shuffled but didn’t break her stance. Any sound she might have made—and she wouldn’t, no matter what Chris said, because Mina was trained to be quiet—was stifled by the loop of a leash cinched down around her snout. Ellie crept forward, aimed a peek around the corner of the woodpile three yards over, but saw only the garage nestled in the woods and the far corner of the house into which Jayden and Chris had gone what seemed hours ago.
Pulling back, she gnawed her lower lip, tried to think of what to do, how long to wait. She could feel the dog vibrating under her hand. Mina wanted to go, get in the fight … if there was one. Ellie still wasn’t sure. Oh, she wasn’t stupid. That gunshot had been very muffled, a tiny pop at this distance but distinct enough that she understood what it was. Yet there was only the one: no return fire at all. No shouts or screams either, which, even with miles between her and the house, she’d probably hear because it was so creepy-quiet.
Anyway, it wasn’t as if she would go running to see what happened. Only little kids did that. But she should do something, because, right now, she figured one of two things was happening: either Chris or Jayden was picking himself off the floor because one of them had tripped, or they’d both been jumped and were now being torn up by a swarm of people-eaters—in which case, what were she and Mina doing sitting on their butts?
She snicked the safety of her Savage, on, off, on, off. On. Off. Made a decision.
“I’m going to count to ten,” she said to Mina. “Then we’re going.” Which route to take? She ought to stay under cover, out of sight. Scooching forward, she gave Mina a little tug to move her out of the way, then hitched around for a better view of that yard waaay out there. Honestly, she needed binoculars. Her eyes roamed over gray trees and clean white snow blushing here and there with shafts of the setting sun; settled on the garage set well back in the woods. A straight shot from here, and then she could—
A twinkle of light. A second later, the garage door cracked open. A hand appeared, and then an arm, following by the hump of a shoulder … and Ellie watched as the girl, a spidery, slinky thing, emerged—with a big honking knife.
Oh! Ellie’s heart jumped a jig. She crowded herself and Mina back fast. Don’t see me, don’t see me! In the brief glimpse she’d had of the girl—and oh boy, she was a people-eater, all right—Ellie registered only long hair clotted with dirt and something wrong with the girl’s face. Like another people-eater had taken a big chunk? Ellie wasn’t sure. She waited, her heart boing-a-boing-a-boinging in her chest, ears alert for the shush of snow or crack of a branch. Nothing came, and Mina didn’t budge.
Okay, so the people-eater doesn’t know I’m here. Lucked out. But now Ellie really had to do something. Maybe that shot she’d heard was a signal: Come and get it; we got juicy boys.
Easing just far enough to clear the woodpile, Ellie saw the girl, low to the ground, scuttling like a tarantula. Blocky and square, that knife looked more like a cleaver.
Ellie’s hand squeezed her rifle, but who was she kidding? If she sent Mina after the people-eater, her dog might get chopped. Fire off a warning shot, though, that might help Jayden and Chris, but that people-eater would find her pretty quick, too. But I have to do something …
From deep in the house came a wild but very muffled shout, a sound swaddled in cotton, and then a soft bam. Something breaking, or a door slamming?
At the same moment the girl reached the corner, wormed her way beneath a long, whippy piece of metal where the house met the ground, and went under the house.
That did it. There was something inside with Chris and Jayden, something very bad, and now this equally awful people-eater was coming at them from behind.
“Go, Mina!” Jumping to her feet, Ellie whipped the leash off Mina’s muzzle. The dog took off like a rocket, and Ellie was right behind, screaming, “Go, Mina, go, Mina, go, go, go!”
101
Chris only had time to register Jayden’s shout and the crash of the door. In the next second, something launched itself into his back, spinning him completely around. He got a brief glimpse of the kitchen before the Changed—girl or boy, he didn’t know—bowled him over, slamming him face-first to the floor. His forehead connected with wood, and he felt the tender skin, which was only just knitting up from the fight with that Changed in Hannah’s kitchen, tear as he bounced. Face roaring with pain, blinking away a sudden wash of warm blood, he got one knee under him and tried bucking the Changed from his back. Behind him, near the stairs, Jayden was still screaming, and then he heard, dimly, what sounded like heavy boots clumping down steps. Another yelp from Jayden, this time one of panic, quickly choked off, and Chris realized that there had been something besides a cat upstairs after all.
Chris heard a whickering over his head; felt something slip around his neck. An instant later, he had no air. Dropping his useless rifle, he clawed, trying to work his fingers under the rope as the Changed put a knee in the middle of his back and pushed at the same time that it pulled. Chris felt his nails score his skin; his pulse thundered; black spiders scurried over his vision. His chest felt as if someone had dropped a huge weight, caving in ribs, smashing his lungs. He reached back to swat at his attacker with both hands but managed only increasingly feeble slaps. He felt the Changed grope then fist his hair, crank his head to expose his neck as the rope crushed his throat. Chris was losing control of his body now, beginning to jitter. The pain in his chest was ferocious, a hard boil that would blow him apart. Everything was going black, inside and out. He couldn’t fight anymore. His legs were juddering uncontrollably now, and so were his hands. He only just registered the slap of wood, the drum of his boots.
All at once, his strength evaporated. He felt himself go limp, the rope saw through the tender flesh of his neck. What should have been a surge of bright pain was only the tiniest blister of a faraway firecracker, sputtering fast. His mind slipped, his hold on consciousness slewing as it had when Hannah’s poison streamed through his veins. An insidious blackness oozed over his vision as the edges of his world collapsed.
Just before he lost his sight completely, he saw something—someone?—suddenly rear, seeming to emerge from the guts of the earth. A voice, very distant, as wispy as smoke: “Over here!”
But then, that was it. All at once, Chris was falling, all thought disintegrating, and where there should have been a floor or the ground or the earth to hold him, there was nothing except Jess pulling together in a swarm of shadows. He thought she might be saying something, but he was moving so fast, he shot past and never—
102
Rolling, Tom surged through the gap. The nearest Chucky, a beefy kid in stained jeans and a too-large camo-jacket, had a knee in the dark-eyed boy’s back and a rope in one hand. Tom could tell the dark-eyed boy was nearly gone; the kid’s body quivered, his face was black, and his eyes rolled to show the whites going crimson with hemorrhage. Beyond them, Tom glimpsed the smaller boy thrashing and kicking at another Chucky, a very large girl raining punches.
“Over here!” he shouted. Flinching, the beefy Chucky relaxed his hold on the boy, who collapsed in a heap and didn’t move. Tom fired, a quick t
hree-shot burst, a soft pfft-pfft-pfft. The Chucky’s chest ruptured in a crimson starburst, and he was falling back even as Tom was clambering out of the crawl space and advancing, moving fast. The girl was still whaling away on the smaller boy, but now seemed to realize the danger, and she was rearing back, beginning to turn.
“Stay down!” Tom roared at the smaller boy. The girl flung herself to one side as Tom squeezed off another burst, stitching shots in the front and storm doors. Jags of glass splashed to the floor, and then the smaller boy was singing, “Gun, gun, she’s got my gun!” Tom saw it at the same moment as the girl pivoted; heard the bolt being thrown as the barrel of a long gun swung around. Dropping to one knee, he ducked under her line of fire and aimed up. One second, the girl’s head was there, and the next—
“Who …” The second boy was panting, trying to roll, get to his feet. Blood streaked his face. Tom couldn’t tell if it was all his, but at least this kid was breathing. “Who are …”
Tom didn’t reply. Turning, he raced back to the dark-eyed boy. The kid—seventeen, eighteen, he thought—was still down, not moving at all, sightless eyes staring, tongue purple and bulging, blood on his throat, that rope cinched tight. God, no. Tom dropped to his knees, stripped away the rope, then drew a hissing breath through his teeth at how deeply the kid’s neck was cut.
“No.” It was the smaller kid, his voice breaking. He knelt by the body. “No, no, he can’t be dead, he can’t—”
“Quiet.” Turning his head, Tom listened for a breath. Nothing. No whisper of air against his cheek. Kid, come on. Closing his eyes, he put his head on the boy’s chest. Silence. Don’t do this, kid, don’t …
