sound of clinking glass.
“If you can’t talk, just cough again. Okay? Let us know you can hear us, at least. Can you do that?”
“I can hear you.” His voice was stronger now, but tinged with pain. “Shit . . .”
“Are you hurt?”
“Yeah.” He paused. More glass tinkled. “But I’ll live. I think. Nothing’s broken, at least.”
“How far down are you?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. Fuck me running. I can just barely see you guys. I dropped your lighter and my cell phone. Lost my knife, too. They’re down here somewhere, but I can’t find them.”
“Can’t you feel around?” Heather asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There’s broken glass all over the floor. I’m sitting in it right now. The less I move around, the better.”
“Jesus . . .” Heather gasped.
Kerri frowned, trying to figure out how to free him.
“Everyone else okay?” Javier asked.
“Brett’s hurt really bad,” Kerri said.
“What happened?” Heather glanced over her shoulder and out into the hallway.
“Another of those dwarf things popped out of the ceiling and attacked him. He’s been bit. He lost three fingers.”
“Oh shit!”
“Yeah. I stopped the bleeding, temporarily at least, but it doesn’t look good.”
Javier let out a choked, muffled yell.
“Babe?” Heather leaned out over the edge of the hole.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think a fucking rat just crawled over my leg. Get me the hell out of here, okay?”
“Okay,” Kerri promised. “Just hang on.”
“We don’t have any rope,” Heather said. “What are we going to do?”
Kerri stood up. “Take your clothes off.”
“Wh-what?”
“You heard me. Take your clothes off. You said it yourself, Heather. We don’t have any rope. We need to get him out of there before more of these . . . whatever they are, come for us. And Brett needs a hospital.”
Without another word, Kerri began peeling off her dirty, sweaty, blood-soaked clothes. They were stiff and sticky, and in a way, it felt good to be free of them. Heather watched her for a moment, and then emptied her pockets and did the same. They piled their keys and other belongings on the floor. Both girls shivered, and goose pimples prickled across their flesh. Despite the stifling lack of airflow in the barricaded house, it was chilly. When they were down to their bras and underwear, Kerri gathered the discarded clothes and began tying them together.
“You guys still there?” Javier sounded worried.
“Yeah,” Heather told him. “We’re here. Kerri’s making a rope. We’ll have you out of there soon. Just hang on.”
Kerri tugged on the makeshift rope. Satisfied that the knots were tight, she lay down on the filthy floor and inched herself out over the pit. Then she lowered the rope into the hole.
“Grab my legs,” she told Heather. “Don’t let me fall, okay?”
“I won’t. Just hurry.”
Out in the hallway, Brett moaned.
“Javier,” Kerri called. “I’m sending a rope down. Can you see it?”
“No . . . wait! Yeah, I see it. Just barely.”
“Can you reach it?”
“Hang on.” He grunted. Then there was the sound of glass crunching again. Javier cursed loudly. “I can’t do it. Too much glass on the floor. I can’t see shit.”
Kerri glanced back over her shoulder. “Heather, give me your cell phone.”
Heather fished it out of the pile of belongings on the floor and handed it to Kerri. She flipped it open and held the open display screen out over the pit. Her other hand gripped the rope. At first, she couldn’t see anything. She lowered the phone farther, and waited for her eyes to adjust. Kerri gasped. The cell phone’s light glittered off the bottom of the hole. The pit was covered with broken glass—bottles, lightbulbs, windowpanes—sharp, glittering shards at least a foot deep. The glass around Javier was bloody. She saw cuts shining on his forearms and face.
“Holy shit . . .”
“What is it?” Heather asked, edging closer.
“He wasn’t kidding about the broken glass.”
“Yeah,” Javier said, glancing around his prison. “Gotta admit, it’s even worse than I thought it was.”
“How badly are you cut?” Kerri asked.
“I’m okay,” he insisted. “None of it pierced my shoes or anything. If you keep the light there, I think I can make it over to the rope.”
Brett’s moans drifted to them.
“Okay,” Kerri said. “But please, try to hurry. Brett’s in pretty bad shape.”
Groaning, Javier stood slowly. Shards of broken glass fell from his body. Kerri noticed a few small fragments jutting from his arms, and winced as Javier plucked them out and cast them aside. He carefully plodded forward and grabbed the line. Kerri sat Heather’s cell phone aside and braced herself, gripping the rope with both hands while Heather grabbed on to her legs again.
“Okay,” Kerri grunted. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t let him fall,” Heather pleaded.
Kerri locked her arms and clenched her jaw. Javier’s weight nearly pulled her down into the pit with him, but she managed to hold on until he’d reached the top. He clambered out of the hole and collapsed next to them, breathing hard. While he examined his cuts, the girls untied the rope and got dressed again. Kerri noticed that even under duress, Javier copped a glance at both her and Heather in the nude.
“Thanks,” Javier said when he’d recovered.
“How bad is it?” Heather asked, brushing tiny pieces of glass from his hair.
“Nothing too deep. Just scratches mostly. Could have been a lot worse.”
“Let’s see to Brett,” Kerri said.
They hurried out into the hallway and knelt next to their friend. Brett was conscious, but obviously in pain and going into shock. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, and his face was pale. Despite this, he smiled when he saw them.
“You look like shit,” Brett told Javier.
“So do you. I hope you got the number of the truck that hit you.”
Kerri heard the tension in Javier’s voice, even though he tried to joke with Brett. His eyes were focused at the three bloody stumps on Brett’s hand.
Brett nodded toward the mutant’s corpse. “See for yourself. Kerri fucked it up good.”
Javier stood and stared at the dead thing. He prodded it with his toe.
“Heather, get a picture of this. My cell is down there in the pit.”
Without a word, Heather touched a button on her phone and aimed the screen toward the dwarf. Kerri held Brett’s good hand and watched. Up close and illuminated, the thing looked worse than it had in the darkness. The skin was pasty and pale, blotched with red areas that appeared to be advanced patches of eczema. The remaining eye was not merely large, it was malformed, with an oblong, hazel iris and uneven pupil. In the stark light, the whites of its eye appeared slightly yellowed. The nose on the woman was wide and flat, the skin on each side pulled back to accommodate a wide slash of a mouth and the thick teeth inside. The jaw was broad and angular. Kerri understood now how it had chewed through Brett’s finger bones so easily. Kerri’s attack had ruined any possible symmetry in the thing’s face, but staring at it now, she was sure that no part of it had ever truly been balanced. The thin hair running along the dead woman’s scalp sporadically painted the jaw line. It was hard to
