Endurance - Jack Kilborn [92]
And then Mal shoved her. Deb teetered, stepping backward, her leg missing the floor and dropping into the hole.
She fell, crying out, insane with panic, and then something snagged her hand and stopped her.
Mal. Holding onto me from above.
“Catch her!” Mal yelled.
Then he let go of Deb’s hand, and once again the crazy panic feeling took over, staying with her even as four strong arms broke her fall.
Rather than feeling relief at still being alive, Deb stared up at the ladder above her, willing for Mal to come down.
He didn’t.
“Mal!” she yelled. “MAL!”
There was an unbearable silence.
Then Mal began to scream.
Kelly couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing. The dead were stacked around her like cords of firewood, almost as high as the ceiling. Most were dishevelled, their skin shrunken and mummified. Others were practically skeletal. They towered on either side, threatening to topple over and bury Kelly in an avalanche of corpses.
Cam got to his feet and kicked something aside. The object rolled away into the darkness, but not before Deb could make out its long hair and two hollowed-out eye sockets.
He just kicked a human head.
“The flame is blowing toward me,” Cam said. “There’s a way out.”
“We need to get Mom.”
“I think I see your dog.”
Cam hurried ahead. Kelly had to follow, or else be left in total darkness. She reached her arms out in front of her, not wanting to bump into anything while chasing Cam, and then felt a sharp pain in her heel just above her gym shoe, like she’d caught it in something.
She immediately lifted her leg up, reaching for her calf—
—touching something greasy and furry. Something that squirmed when her fingers touched its pointy nose.
Oh my god it’s a rat!
Kelly had held rats before; one of her friends had a rat as a pet. But that one was tame and cute, and this one was biting her ankle.
She stabbed at the creature with her scalpel. It dropped off, squealing, just as Kelly felt another one run up her other leg. She jabbed that one as well, but then there were more of them, running over her feet, bumping into her from all directions. The scalpel wasn’t enough.
“Cam!”
Kelly ran forward, wanting more than anything to get the hell away from there, and then she was pressed up against the pile of corpses, her face mashing into someone long dead. Thick dust—dead flesh?—rained down on Kelly, getting in her eyes and nose.
“Cam!” she said, and then bent over and vomited when a flake of something putrescent landed in her mouth.
More squealing, and then there was light again and Cam appeared, stomping on rats, breaking their backs and kicking them aside. He took Kelly under the arm and said, “Hurry! I found your dog!”
They stumbled through the corpse maze, rats on their heels, and then Kelly felt a fresh, clean breeze on her face. The smell was glorious. She glimpsed the full moon in the distance, through a barred iron gateway which was pushed open. There, next to a tree—
“JD!”
The dog didn’t look at her. He was hunched down, his teeth bared, staring at something in the dark.
Kelly began to run to him, but Cam caught her shirt, holding her back.
“Wait,” Cam whispered.
A moment later, Kelly understood Cam’s caution.
Slinking out of the woods, approaching her dog, was a mountain lion.
If it’s the last thing I do in my life, I’m going to kill that bitch.
Maria headed for the staircase after Eleanor, but a familiar figure blocked her way.
George.
His powdered wig was on crooked, and the Revolutionary War uniform he wore was stained with blood splotches and gunky styptic.
“I din’t get to stick it to y’all earlier. But you ain’t gettin’ away this time.”
He reached for her, his lips curled in a snarl. Maria let him grab her, pull her close.
How about I stick it to you instead, asshole?
And then she rammed the scalpel so far into his bloodshot eyeball the tip touched the back of his skull.
George crumpled to the floor. Maria pulled out the scalpel, which came free with