by Brian Keene
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 u
se 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.
She paused, tilting her head and listening. The snuffling thing was gone—or at least silent again. Kerri tried to do the same, working as quietly as possible. With little to go by but her sense of touch, she eventually uncovered the wood’s dimensions. It was bigger than she’d imagined. She pulled along the first edge and got nothing for her efforts. The second edge had a bit of yield, and the third edge lifted awkwardly a few inches, slowly and with a wet sucking sound.
It’s a door, she realized. But to where? A sub-basement? Who puts a door in the floor of a cave?
The air billowing up from below smelled different. Not fresher, but less vile. It was a welcome change. Taking a deep breath, Kerri slid her arm into the black space and felt the coolness beneath. Her fingers failed to touch anything but open air. Whatever might be hidden below was too far down for her to reach it. She stretched farther, trying to feel for some stairs or a ladder, when behind her, there came another noise. It sounded like something metal being scraped across stone. Several guttural voices echoed from either side of her. As she listened, they turned to whispers.
Cautious but quick, Kerri slipped her body lower. The wooden slab dropped as she did, scraping along her shoulder blades and then her back. It was heavy enough to pin her in place. She struggled with it, still trying to stay quiet, and pushed the door up long enough to slide the rest of her body beneath it. Her feet touched something solid. Standing on it, she ducked her head and lowered the door back into place. Then she explored this new area. Her left hand scraped along what felt like a stone wall. It was dry and cool. She raised one foot and thrust it out into the darkness. Kerri sighed with relief when she found another stair. She slowly started down it, wondering what was at the bottom.
***
Javier had lost his belt. He remembered that much upon regaining consciousness. He fumbled around in the darkness, searching for the makeshift weapon, and then it all came rushing back to him. The belt had been ripped from his hands by a shadowed opponent during his escape. But then what? He lay on the ground, defenseless and aching, trying to remember what else had happened. His face hurt, and a nauseating mix of blood and mud blocked one of his nostrils and filled his mouth. Coughing, Javier pushed himself up into a sitting position and shook the muck from his face and hair.
What the hell had happened?
He remembered running. Shouting at the others to follow him, trying to clear a path for them by taking the creatures on himself. And he had. He’d cut through the motherfuckers like a buzz saw, relishing each of their grunts or cries of surprise and pain. Whoever these people were (because despite their deformities, Noigel and his friends were clearly human), they obviously weren’t used to having their prey fight back. He’d been doing fine until he lost the belt. Then they’d closed in on him, and his fear had overtaken his bravado, and Javier had fled.
Javier couldn’t remember anything past that, no matter how hard he tried, so he decided to take a different tack. He gingerly felt his body, wincing as his fingers found dozens of shallow cuts and bruises. He didn’t think he was injured too badly, however. He listened, hoping to hear Heather or Kerri or Brett, but the darkness was silent. It seemed to press against him, as if trying to climb inside his body. Javier mentally pushed back. Satisfied that he’d live, at least for the moment, he felt around him, patting the ground. Then he reached out into the black void. His fingers came in contact with a stone wall.
Then he remembered. The wall. He’d run into it in the dark. He hadn’t known what it was—he hadn’t been conscious long enough to wonder. All he’d known was that he’d run headlong into something hard. Then he’d woken up again. He now assumed that he’d hit the wall with enough force to knock himself stupid.
His luck had held twice tonight—first with the glass pit and now with this . . . whatever this was. He assumed caverns of some kind. Natural or man-made. Or maybe both.
He slid over to the wall and rested his back against it. The silence deepened. There was no sign of his girlfriend or his friends. No sign of their pursuers, either. He was on his own down here. The realization filled him with shame and worry. He felt responsible for all of them. No, it wasn’t his fault that they were in this mess, but as far as he was concerned, they were under his protection. And they wouldn’t have entered the house in the first place if he hadn’t been the one to suggest it after Brett’s stupid outburst.
“What the hell was I thinking?” He muttered the words to himself and spit a trail of saliva and mud away from his lips. “Should have confronted those guys and just apologized for my idiot friend. Or called the police right there.”
He fumbled for Brett’s cell phone. He’d still had it in his hands when they were attacked, but now it was gone. He tried to remember whether he’d stuck it in his pocket as he ran. He wasn’t sure. If he had, his pocket was empty now. Javier’s heart sank. It must have fallen out of his grip during his dash through the cellar or when he crashed into the wall. He patted the ground, searching for it, but his effort s were futile. His hands came up empty. Javier was overcome by a wave of confusion, fear, and despair. Heather, Brett, and Kerri might be dead and he was lost underground, in total darkness, with no weapons to defend himself.
“Well, fuck that noise.”
Javier listened to his words echo. Wherever he was, it sounded like a wide-open space. Grinding his teeth, he slowly got to his feet, taking his time and trying to keep his balance. His legs felt a little wobbly and his head light, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to allow that. Javier had been in bad situations before—situations nobody knew about. Not even Heather. They’d happened when he was younger, before his family had moved to East Petersburg. Ancient history. He’d lived through them, and he intended to live through this one, as well. He forced himself to move forward, trailing his hand along the wall so that he had a frame of reference in the darkness. Javier told himself that he didn’t need the cell phone anyway. Using it to light his way at this juncture would have been foolish. The last thing he needed to do was advertise his position to the cannibalistic freaks.
He made a silent vow to buy Brett a new phone as soon as they got out of here, and then wondered if he’d ever see his friend again long enough to keep that promise.
Water dripped down on his head. Javier glanced upward and then felt foolish. He couldn’t see anything. He made his way through the subterranean chamber, determined to find the girls and Brett if he could, but to also find a way to escape. It had to be down here somewhere. Brett had overheard the killers say so. Javier stopped in his tracks, chilled by a sudden terrifying thought. What if Noigel and the guy wearing a woman’s skin had just been fucking with Brett? What if they’d known he was hiding in the kitchen and rather than killing him right then and there, they’d toyed with him instead, leading him to believe that the basement was the only way out of the house?
If so, there was nothing he could do about it now. Javier seriously doubted that he’d be able to find his way back to the basement stairs, even if he did find Heather and the others. He started walking again. His back felt tight and his neck was stiff with tension. He ignored the aches and pains, doing his best to listen for any possible sound, but other than the occasional drip of water, the area remained deathly still.
***
Paul woke up in transit and captive. He’d been trussed upside down on a long, metal pole. Steel, judging by its texture and weight. It would have probably fetched him a nice price at a scrap yard. Rough cords cut into his wrists and ankles, chafing his skin. He bobbed and sw
ayed as his captors carried him along, trekking through some sort of underground tunnel. Paul was staring at the ground, so he raised his head a little and glanced at the walls. They seemed natural, rather than man-made. A cave, maybe? He’d never heard of caverns beneath Philadelphia, but the idea wasn’t so surprising. Pennsylvania was riddled with limestone caverns and shafts, as well as abandoned iron ore and coal mines.
As his full senses returned, he wondered how he was able to see if he was indeed in an underground cavern. Then he felt a slight breeze on the back of his neck. Despite his terror and confusion, the sudden gust of air momentarily soothed him. When Paul opened his eyes again, his wits had returned. For a second, he wished that they hadn’t, because with his wits came memories of what had transpired—his trip into the sewers, falling through the hole, landing in that foul pool of liquefied bodies and sewer water, and finally—the things that had been waiting for him there in the darkness. Paul raised his head and stared at his captors. His mouth went dry. He drew in breath to scream, but before he could, a particularly hard jostling knocked the air from his lungs again.
They were all around him. He counted at least eight—two on each end of the pole he was dangling from (he saw now that it was some sort of sewer pipe and iron rather than steel), their muscles bulging, grunting with effort as they carried him along. In addition to the pole bearers, there were several more beings scampering along ahead of them, as well as at the rear of the precession. He tried to figure out what they were. Humanoid, certainly, but Paul wasn’t positive that they were actually human. They varied in size and shape, and each was cursed with unique birth defects. Some of the mutations were almost mundane, while others were utterly horrifying. One of his captors was bare-chested and covered by a thick mat of curly black hair, out of which peeked four dime-sized nipples. Another seemed to have double the amount of joints in his legs, arms, and fingers. Paul stared at a misshapen lump of flesh jutting from the thing’s left shoulder, and then realized that the lump of flesh was staring back at him with one small, watery eyeball—a second head, a Siamese twin, not fully developed. What looked like a ragged pink scar was really a tiny mouth. A third creature, a female, appeared relatively normal, but she was obviously pregnant with either quintuplets or a giant lone fetus. Her distended belly stuck out before her, glistening, the bare flesh a sickly, swollen kaleidoscope of purple and black hues. Her massive breasts slapped her ribs as she walked. Clear fluid dripped from her mauled nipples. He wondered if she’d given birth before, and if so, whether it was her offspring that had chewed her nipples like that. Her wild thatch of pubic hair was filthy and matted. She gibbered as she loped along, a thin line of drool running from her mouth and dangling to a spot directly in the middle of her obscene cleavage. Her facial features were similar to that of someone with Down’s syndrome, but her expression was cruel and savage.
