judge how old the mutant might have been.
Then Kerri noticed something else. Earlier, when she’d been attacked in the dark, she’d bitten down on what could have only been her attacker’s tongue. The tongue of the woman on the floor was uninjured, and while the hand that had clutched Kerri’s hand was equipped with long, talon-like fingernails, the corpse’s nails were blunt and cracked.
Javier shook his head. “Midgets. Giants. What’s next?”
“Let’s not stick around to find out,” Kerri said. “This isn’t the one that attacked me earlier. That makes at least five of them, counting the two we’ve killed, and the two Brett saw earlier.”
“Brett,” Javier whispered, “can you walk?”
Licking his lips, he nodded.
“Where’s your cell phone?” Kerri asked him.
“I put it in my pocket,” Brett explained. “I didn’t want the battery to get low. We might need it later.”
“So you sat here in the dark?”
“Y-yeah.”
“You dork.” She patted his hand.
“We can’t go back the way we came,” Javier said, his Spanish accent growing more noticeable for a moment. “And we can’t go forward any farther, unless we want to swim in broken glass.”
“And all the other doors and windows are bricked up,” Heather said. “So how do we get out of this shithole?”
Kerri cringed. Heather’s voice was shrill and stressed.
Brett moaned again. “Seriously. I need bandages, or a real tourniquet.”
“I’m going to need your belt, anyway,” Javier told him.
“What? Why?” Kerri frowned.
“Because I lost my knife, and I need a weapon, and you’re in no shape to fight if we get attacked again.”
Brett chuckled and winced. “Yeah, well, I think I need it more than you right now, dude.”
“You can use my club,” Kerri said.
Javier smiled. “No, you’re keeping that. By the looks of this thing, you’re pretty good with it.”
Heather sighed impatiently. “Well, if the doors and windows are all blocked, why don’t we try hammering our way out? I’ve still got my brick.”
Brett answered before anyone else could. “There’s no way we’re getting past that barricade. Not without a sledgehammer or something.”
Javier looked down at his hands for a moment and then back at each of his friends. “So we find a different way out of here. And I know how.”
“What do you have in mind?” Kerri’s voice was low and soft, but every word was clipped. She’d noticed that Brett’s breathing was growing erratic.
Javier looked up at the trapdoor in the ceiling. “We have one doorway that isn’t blocked.”
Heather shook her head. “No fucking way.”
“How are we going to get Brett up there?” Kerri asked. “Look at his hand. He can’t go crawling around on it.”
“He has to. Either that, or we hide him here and go for help.”
“I’ll go along,” Brett whispered. “I can do it.”
“We follow it to wherever it lets out,” Javier said. “Then we look for this basement that Brett told us about. It’s the only choice we have left. Either we find a way out, or we find something to help us get past the barricades.”
“Maybe if we all tried to move them together?” Kerri suggested.
“No,” Javier’s voice was low and firm. “I tried moving the barrier, too. I think something is locking it in place.”
Coughing, Brett sat up and started taking off his bloody T-shirt. “Somebody want to help me here?”
“What are you doing?” Kerri tried forcing him to sit back against the wall.
“I need to use my shirt as a tourniquet. Javier needs my belt.”
Kerri slipped her hands under her shirt, and unhooked her bra. Then she slipped it out of her sleeve.
“Try this. It should do the job a little better.”
Brett grinned. “Impressive.”
“Yeah. Tyler used to . . .”
She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence. Kerri was surprised. With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about Tyler while they were trapped in this hallway. She guessed that she’d pretty much gone insane after Tyler died—freaking out and everything. But here in the corridor, she’d pushed past all that. She’d killed the mutant, made a tourniquet and a rope, rescued Javier, and then made another tourniquet with her bra like she was MacGyver with breasts. Now her take-charge attitude evaporated as it all came rushing back to her.
“That’s perfect.” Javier took the bra from her and knelt next to Brett. His hands moved quickly and deftly, wrapping the still warm undergarment around Brett’s wrist and pulling it tight. A moment later he pulled the belt away and examined Brett’s fingers.
“Heather, can you light his hand?”
Heather shined the screen over Brett’s hand, and they all leaned closer. His remaining fingers were swelling. Kerri winced as she looked at the damage. She didn’t know how Javier could study the wounds with such clinical detachment.
“Good,” Javier said. “The blood flow has stopped. Cutting off the circulation was a quick fix, but if we don’t get you to a doctor soon, you’ll have bigger worries than a few fingers. You need blood in your hand or you’ll wind up losing it. So it’s good that the flow has ceased.”
Brett cleared his throat and moved his hand out of the light. “So, let’s get going. Fuck this sitting around shit.”
His tone was lighthearted, but Kerri could hear the fear in his voice. She knew how he felt. Brett had always been one to make jokes or talk tough when he was nervous or insecure or scared. This time was no exception, but he couldn’t mask the terror. It was there in his voice, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
It mirrored her own.
TEN
“Still no po-po,” Leo sighed. “This shit is fucked up.”
Their other friends had wandered off down the street, bored with waiting around and looking for some other form of entertainment. He, Markus, Jamal, Chris, and Dookie were still standing on the corner, watching the house at the end of the block. The derelict building seemed to loom larger as the night grew darker. Mr. Watkins stayed outside with them as well, not saying much. Just listening. Privately, Leo wondered if Mr. Watkins suspected they were going to fuck with the white kids’ car and was hanging around to make sure they didn’t.
“Yo,” Chris said. “Y’all remember when them NSB boys were outrunning the cops, and they holed up inside the Mutter Museum and took hostages and shit?”
The others nodded.
“Yeah,” Leo replied. “So what?”
“I watched that shit on television. This shorty I knew from back in the day was banging a dude from NSB’s crew.”
“Only shorty you know,” Markus teased, “is the one that gave you the drips.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Chris frowned. “Anyway, there were cops all deep around that museum, in like, five minutes and shit. Now why do they show up for that, but not for this?”
“Because,” Leo told him, “there ain’t no tourists flocking to see our neighborhood like they do for the Mutter Museum.”
The boys chuckled. Leo glanced at Mr. Watkins. The older man’s eyes seemed to sparkle, and there was a slight grin on his face.
“Mr. Watkins,” Leo said, “you know you don’t have to hang out here with us, right? I mean, if you gotta go to work tomorrow, then you probably want to go to bed. It doesn’t look like the police are gonna show, anyway.”
Shrugging, Perry took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled smoke into the night air. “That’s okay. Lawanda
