by Brian Keene
Leo was momentarily stunned by Markus’s invective. He struggled not to show it. He couldn’t display any weakness or doubts right now, or the others would begin to have misgivings, too.
“If you don’t like it, Markus, then get the fuck out of here. We don’t need your sorry ass.”
“I ain’t going nowhere. You damn sure don’t run this street. I’ll stay if I want.”
Leo’s fists clenched and unclenched. “Suit yourself. But if you’re staying, then you’ll damn sure quit talking shit and apologize to Mr. Watkins.”
“Fuck that. What’s this old man ever done for me, except look at me funny when I’m out too late? You remember a couple of years ago on Halloween, when somebody broke all the car windows on the block and egged the houses? Remember how he looked at us after that?”
Mr. Watkins stirred. Before he could speak, Leo interrupted.
“Did he accuse you, Markus? Huh? Did he accuse any of us?”
Markus smirked. “He didn’t have to. You could see it in his eyes.”
“You know what? Just get the fuck out of here. Go on home.”
“You can’t make me do shit, Leo. And you keep stepping to me like this, I’m gonna knock you the fuck down.”
“I hear you talking, but I don’t see you moving.”
“Fuck you, motherfucker.”
“No,” Leo said, poking his friend in the chest with his index finger. “Fuck you. That’s your ass, Markus.”
“Enough!” Mr. Watkins stuffed the pistol in his waistband, stepped between the teens, and placed a hand on each of their chests. “That’s enough. Knock this bullshit off. What the hell is wrong with you both? Do you think this is helping somehow?”
Leo tensed. “He started it. I was just sticking up for you.”
“I don’t need you to watch my back out here,” Mr. Watkins said, nodding at the house. “I need you to watch in there. We need to watch out for each other.” He paused, then turned to Markus. His hand was still on the young man’s chest. “I know why you’re doing this.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you’re scared.”
“Fuck you, old man. I ain’t scared of shit.”
“Yes, you are,” Mr. Watkins said, ignoring Markus’s curled fists. “You’re terrified.”
Leo had to give him credit. Mr. Watkins had balls. He could tell by Jamal, Chris, and Dookie’s expressions that they were impressed as well. Markus’s eyes flashed to the handgun in Mr. Watkins’s waistband. Leo held his breath, ready to spring if Markus went for the weapon.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mr. Watkins warned. Then his voice became soothing again. “I know you’re scared because I’m scared, too. We all are. Hell, we’d have to be some crazy motherfuckers not to be scared, walking into this place. But this? This ain’t helping. Okay?”
Markus paused, glancing at each of his friends. Then he looked down at his feet.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “You’re right.”
“Apologize to the man,” Leo said.
“He doesn’t need to,” Mr. Watkins said. “There’s no reason to apologize for feeling the same thing that the rest of us are feeling. But I’ll tell you what you can do, Markus.”
“What’s that?”
“Run on back up the street to my house. Tell Lawanda to go down in the basement and get my crowbar and my sledgehammer. Then bring them back here.”
“You’re gonna smash the door down?” Chris asked.
“Won’t they hear us?”
Mr. Watkins shrugged. “If there is anybody else inside that house other than them kids, then you can bet your ass that they already know we’re here. Especially with all the hollering and carrying on. We’ve lost the element of surprise. Now we’re just going to bum rush them.”
As Markus trotted up the street, Mr. Watkins pulled out his pistol and faced the front door.
Grinning, Leo playfully punched the older man in the shoulder.
“Damn, Mr. Watkins. I had no idea you were so hardcore. Original fucking gangsta!”
Mr. Watkins didn’t smile. He paused, lighting another cigarette. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and seemed sad.
“I’m no gangster, Leo. What I am is a pissed-off, middle-aged black man whose gut sticks out over his pecker now and who can’t get any from his wife except on holidays and gets hollered at for smoking in the house and hates his shitty job and is tired of watching this neighborhood turn to shit, because this neighborhood is all he has left in this world. And there ain’t nothing on Earth more hardcore than that.”
They waited, and when Markus returned, they moved with grim purpose. Without a word, Mr. Watkins handed the gun to Leo and the crowbar to Chris. Grunting, he wielded the sledgehammer. It’s bright yellow, fiberglass handle seemed to glow in the darkness.
Mr. Watkins tossed his cigarette butt out into the street and stepped forward.
“Okay, boys. Let’s go knock on the door again.”
They clomped up the porch, no longer bothering to conceal their presence. Then Mr. Watkins raised the sledgehammer and swung, putting all his weight into it. The door shuddered in its frame. Wood splintered with a loud crack.
“Listen,” Dookie gasped.
From inside the house, they all heard the sound of fleeing footsteps.
“You think it’s those white kids?” Leo asked, nervously fumbling with the gun.
“Only one way to find out,” Mr. Watkins said, and swung the sledgehammer again.
SEVENTEEN
Heather clutched the sharpened butter knife in one hand and the sputtering lamp in the other. Both items jittered from her uncontrollable trembling. Although she’d willed herself to stop, the shaking continued. Worse, even though she could see her breath in front of her, appearing as white puffs of cloud each time she exhaled, Heather was bathed in sweat. Neither condition was conducive to escaping. She didn’t know if it was shock or fear or the temperature or a combination of all three, but it was maddening and aggravating. It was hard enough listening for sounds of pursuit behind her without having to do it over the chattering of her own teeth. The only part of her not shaking was her feet. They were completely numb. She’d tried pinching the soles, but she felt nothing other than a vague twinge. She could still walk, but she had no sensation in them.
Since leaving the strange grotto behind, the ground beneath Heather had been rising steadily as she progressed through the small tunnel. She’d lost track of time and had no way of knowing how long she’d been crawling. The darkness and her own fatigue weighed heavily on her, and it was getting harder to concentrate. Her mind kept returning to the bizarre collection of photographs and drawings, trying to mine some meaning from them—some explanation for the evening’s horrifying events. She grew increasingly frustrated trying to figure it out. Nothing about this situation made sense. It all just seemed so random. So unexplainable. How could such a race of beings exist undetected beneath a city the size of Philadelphia for so long? And what were they? Mutants, obviously, but from where? And from whom? They didn’t seem to have any single racial characteristic or genetic background. How long had they been here? How many people had they killed?
She had no way of knowing. In fact, all that Heather knew for sure was that her legs hurt, her back hurt, and her eyes felt gritty from sweat and dirt. There were blisters on her palms and knees, and the cut on her foot was bleeding again. Lantern smoke drifted lazily into her face, obscuring her vision and making her choke. Each time a new round of shaking overtook her, Heather’s teeth clamped together. She’d bitten her tongue and the insides of her cheeks several times. The slow, steady taste of blood made her stomach roil.
Heather wondered how much farther she’d have to climb before she could escape this nightmare. By all rights, she should have been above ground by now. And yet here she was, still stuck in a damned tunnel with the weight of the entire city over her head. She wished it would all just come crashing down, squashing everything flat. Even tha
t would be preferable to this miserable, torturous scurrying around in the dark. Heather stifled a laugh. Her brother would have loved this shit. He was always playing his dungeon crawl games online. He’d have been right at home here.
A deep, thunderous rumble echoed from somewhere behind her, reminding Heather of her immediate danger. She forced away the self-pity and crawled on, clinging to the hope that she’d get somewhere if she just kept going the same direction she was headed. Then again, it wasn’t like she had much choice. There were no branching tunnels. Her options were moving forward up the slope or retreating back the way she’d come—and she knew what awaited her there. All roads have to lead somewhere. That was what her dad always said, at least. She wondered if her parents were worried about her yet. Would Kerri’s or Steph’s parents be looking for them? Would they have called the police by now? Or Javier’s mother, maybe? No, she worked nights, and Javier hadn’t seen his father since he was three years old.
The air changed up ahead. She felt it shift, running across her face like the touch of light fingers. The sensation was amazing after what seemed like forever in the stifling dampness of the caves. The lantern flickered and hissed, and the flame danced around as if also enjoying the breeze. She had no idea what was up ahead of her, but if there was fresh air, then surely that meant there was a way out.
Heather’s spirits soared. She forgot all about her family, about Javier and Kerri and Brett, and focused solely on survival and escape. She crawled faster. Then the air shifted again, bringing a new stench—a thick, pungent odor of rot and filth, stronger than any she’d smelled so far tonight. Despite her best efforts to ignore the scent, Heather gagged, choking. Ropes of spittle hung from her open mouth. Her stomach heaved. If she’d had anything inside it, she would have vomited. Instead, the muscles in her abdomen cramped, expanding and contracting painfully. Heather wiped her lips with the back of her hand and gasped, trying not to gag again. The flickering lamplight glinted off the sharpened butter knife. She focused on it. When she’d calmed down again, she proceeded onward, breathing through her mouth as she crawled. That didn’t help much; she could taste the repugnant aroma on her tongue. Soon, whatever was ahead of her became too much. Her eyes watered, blurring her vision, and her gag reflex refused to stop. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to puke.
At least her uncontrollable trembling had ceased.
She turned around, raised the lamp, and looked back down the tunnel and into the darkness. If her pursuers were still back there, they were being quiet. She was so close to the surface. She had to be! But she didn’t think she could make it any farther, struggling against that reeking miasma. She debated turning around and returning to the small room.
Heather was still considering her options when she heard chattering laughter behind her, coming from the same direction as the stench. The sound was high pitched and excited. She spun around again, holding the lantern high and thrusting the butter knife out in front of her. Shadows scurried toward her, growing larger with each passing second. Then the creatures skittered into view. Heather shrieked, and something tore in the back of her throat. The things that came for her were obscenities, barely even capable of being called humanoid. These weren’t mere mutations, like the others she’d seen. These organisms were utter blasphemies.
The one at the very front of the horde was horrific enough to leave her staggered, even in the dim light of the lantern. The monstrosity had no body that she could see—at least, not in the traditional sense. Instead, it consisted of a giant head, three times the size of a normal human’s, with a thick, tubular mass of pink and gray flesh beneath it. Something that might have been large fingers or tiny legs or maybe tentacles flailed and bumped. The creature slithered closer. Heather saw its sides expand and contract as the muscles within hunched and strained. Despite its odd extremities, the thing was fast. The appendages beneath its tumor-like body helped propel it forward, clinging to the tunnel floor and pulling with frightening efficiency. Heather gaped, unable to move. The beast was almost mesmerizing in its atrociousness. It stared back at her with wide, wet eyes the size of tea saucers. Its gibbering, drooling mouth was pulled back in a sneer. Gobs of green-yellow snot dripped from its bulbous, misshapen nose.
She barely had time to absorb the shock of the first beast before the second came into view. It had nothing in common with the first. Her mind flashed back to her junior year, and Mrs. Atkins’s biology class. One day, while discussing birth defects, Mrs. Atkins had shown slides of several different fetuses that had failed to mature. The second creature to scramble down the tunnel toward her looked like one of those fetuses brought to life. The eyes in its head were enormous. Its eyelids were so thin that she could see the eyeballs moving clearly beneath them. The mutant’s nose and lips were translucent, and like its eyes, they seemed much too large for its hideous face. The head itself was bloated and misshapen, more of a lopsided oval than anything resembling round. The beast crawled forward on small warped legs and arms. Heather cried out in disgust and horror. Clearly, it should have died in the womb, but it hadn’t. Here it was, an affront to nature and evolution, hurrying along behind its friend and baring blunt, stumpy teeth that filled its mouth. They flashed in the lantern light as it licked its thin lips and squeaked.
A third creature had a harelip that split its upper mouth all the way to its flared nostrils. It had no nose—just two gaping holes where its nose should have been. Uneven teeth and gums were visible through the harelip. Its body was stunted and wrinkled.
There were worse things behind the first three. She heard them gasping and wheezing, squealing with high-pitched voices. Their labored breaths echoed off the tunnel walls. Their fingernails scratched against stone. They poured toward her, a mutant tide of crawling, hopping and in some cases, slithering monstrosities, mewling like hungry babies—which was, in effect, exactly what they were.
The combined stench of the horde grew overwhelming as they bore down on her. It snapped Heather out of her stunned paralysis. She flung the lantern at them and pivoted around on her knees, facing the opposite direction. She heard glass breaking and metal clanging as the lantern caromed off the rocks behind her. There was a brief but bright flare, and the creatures screamed. Heather screamed, too. She bounced off the tunnel wall with bruising force and started crawling back the way she’d come. She hurried, heedless of the damage her mad scramble across the stone floor was doing to her palms and knees. The light dimmed and then fizzled. Darkness enveloped the tunnel once again. Heather didn’t care. She knew the way back to the room. There were no branching passageways for her to get lost in. Most importantly, in the darkness, she couldn’t see the pursuing horrors.
She could hear them, though. With the fire extinguished, their cries grew frenzied. They chased after her again, and while their malformations and handicaps slowed them down, they sounded tenacious and enraged. Heather crawled faster, her teeth bared and her eyes wide, trying desperately to see. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her lungs worked like a bellows. Her gasps seemed to echo back to her. She ignored the pain each time a rock sliced through her palms or scraped her arms. Spurred on by adrenaline and fear, and unable to navigate except by touch and sound, Heather struck her head on a low-hanging outcrop. The force of the blow knocked her flat on her belly. She cried out, and the creatures cheered. Warm blood flowed into her left eye. Her fingertips explored her forehead. There was a cut above her left eyebrow. She winced as she touched it. Heather wiped the blood away and tried to sit up.
Thick, clammy fingers clutched at her ankle. Screaming, Heather kicked, and the fingers slipped away. They returned a second later, gripping more forcefully this time. Other appendages joined in the effort —tendrils, fingers, teeth, and things she was too afraid to identify. Heather spun around and swung wildly with her knife. Several of the creatures howled and spat. Her foot scraped along something that felt like a rib cage. She stabbed the knife downward, slashing at a small hand squeezing her thigh. The tunnel
filled with shrieks—hers and theirs. Something warm and wet—blood or spittle—splashed across her cheek. Heather lunged backward, kicking and slashing, and the creatures fell back. She started to scuttle away, but something leaped onto her chest and slapped her face. Despite the mutant’s diminutive size, it was a powerful blow. Her cheek stung and her ears rang. More blood flowed into her eye from the cut above her brow.
Another monster gnawed at her arm. Judging by the feel, it was toothless. Heather lashed out at it and felt scaly skin. She swung her arm, knocking the beast on her chest backward, and slashed at the scaly one with her sharpened butter knife. Both fell away. Heather flipped over and scurried forward again. The knife slipped from her grasp.
“No. No nonononono . . .”
Sobbing, Heather pawed at the ground. Her hand closed on the cool, metallic handle and she seized it. Then she froze, muscles stiffening, her mouth open in a silent scream. She tried to cry out, but all that came from her lips was a fluttering sigh.
Heather was no stranger to pain. When she was seven years old, Heather had fallen from a tree and dislocated her shoulder. The pain had made her nauseous. A few years later, when she’d impaled her calf on a stick while playing tag with her brother and some neighbor kids, the pain had been intolerable. She’d had a few bad weeks where she was almost certain she would never be able to walk without discomfort again. Neither of those experiences came close to what she was feeling now. Dozens of sharp teeth sank into the back of her calf, just two inches below her knee. The pain bloomed like a flower, slowly spreading into something bright and vivid.
Talons slashed at her ankle and the teeth sank deeper into her calf. A hot, sandpapery tongue lapped at the blood welling from the wound. Heather lashed out with her free leg, ramming her heel into the face of the creature behind her. It jerked backward, but not before taking a few pieces of meat with it. Heather spun around and slashed blindly in the dark with the knife. Something hot splashed across her arm and hand. Her attacker emitted a horrid, bubbling squeal and snatched the knife from Heather’s grip. She heard it thrashing and howling instead of trying to attack her again. Above its cries, she heard the rest of the horde closing in.
