The Midnight Tour

“HIT THE DECK, CLYDE HONEY!”

Sandy knew that voice.

Jerking her head forward, she saw Clyde throw himself flat on the dirt floor.

Beyond where he lay, Agnes Kutch waddled up the middle of the tunnel. Her hair looked rosy in the flashing red light. She had put on a lot of weight over the past seventeen years. As she trudged closer, her massive body flopped and bounced and swung inside her sheer nightgown.

Down low, clutched in both hands with its stock clamped against her bulging right side, Agnes carried something that looked very much like a Thompson submachine gun with a drum magazine.

“AGNES!” Sandy shouted. “DONT SHOOT! ITS ME! DROP THE... ”

“Gimme!” a woman squealed into Sandy’s ear. An arm reached past her face and a body slammed into her back, crashing her forward.

She stumbled, trying to keep her feet.

But it was no use.

As she began to fall, Agnes opened up. The Thompson jumped in her hands, spitting flame and bullets, deafening Sandy with its pounding roar.

On the way down, the gal on Sandy’s back tried to grab her wrist.

But suddenly jerked.

Blood exploded over the back of Sandy’s head and neck.

The weight of the woman smashed her against the tunnel floor. The impact knocked her breath out, but she kept her head up.

Agnes kept firing, her grin awash in the lightning of her muzzle flashes, her whole body jumping and shuddering as the Thompson jerked in her arms.

Flat on her belly, hurting all over, Sandy blinked her eyes clear of sweat and blood, stretched out her arm and fired a single shot.

It smacked Agnes in the forehead.

She keeled backward on stiff legs, raking the tunnel ceiling with gunfire, and landed flat on her back.

The Thompson went silent, stood erect by her side for a moment, then fell over sideways.

Sandy rolled out from under the body of the woman who’d wanted her pistol. The gal flopped over. She’d caught one in the right eye.

Clyde was still sprawled flat on the floor.

Sandy stood up.

She didn’t much want to turn around.

She turned around, anyway.

All of them were down, knocked sprawling by the heavy slugs of Agnes’s submachine gun: two teenaged boys, the man in the camel sweater and his wife. She looked at them only long enough to see that they’d been riddled beyond help. They were dead or dying.

She turned to Clyde.

“Get up,” she said.

He pushed himself to his knees.

Sandy saw that the big, fake penis was broken and dangling.

She walked toward him.

He raised his arms.

“I give,” he said, and smiled nervously.

She shot him in the face.

The blowback splashed her belly and breasts.

She watched him topple backwards.

Then she sighed and lowered the pistol.

And stood there.

I’d better go back to the others, she thought. But her body ached everywhere and she felt too weary to move.

Chapter Sixty-one

A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

Crawling through the narrow tunnel, Dana tried her best to keep up with Eve. Each time she raised her head, however, the naked legs and rear end of her friend were farther away.

She was tempted to call out, “Slow down.”

But it would be a waste of breath.

Eve wouldn’t slow down and wait for her; she was a woman an a mission, out to save the day.

Dana kept on crawling, sweating, huffing for air.

When she raised her head again, Eve was nowhere to be seen.

In front of her, the tunnel slanted upward.

Must be almost to the top.

Eve was probably out already.

On knees and elbows, Dana struggled up the slope. Why wasn’t any light coming in from the cellar? Maybe she was farther away than she thought.

Through the ringing in her ears, she heard people shouting.

Suddenly, her head was out of the hole.

What’s...?

The cellar wasn’t dark, after all. It glowed with red, flickering light that came from the Kutch tunnel.

Just as she realized that the barred iron door stood wide open, someone dashed into the tunnel.

Eve?

Dana only caught a glimpse before the woman raced out of sight.

It has to be Eve, she told herself. A naked gal running off with a pistol in her hand. Who else could it be?

Besides, nobody else on the tour had a figure like that.

Had Clyde taken off through the tunnel?

She shined her flashlight around, looking for the white costume. Her beam showed people sprawled on the floor, others huddled together, a few hurrying this way and that.

No sign of Clyde.

As Dana crawled out of the hole, someone rushed at her from the left. She flung up an arm, expecting a blow. Her arm was grabbed. “The shit hit the fan,” Tuck said, pulling to help her up. “Clyde went nuts. He busted the light and started clawing everybody. It was fuckin pandemonium around here.”

On her feet, Dana said, “Where is he?”

“Took off through the Kutch tunnel. Eve went after him.”

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Dana shined the light on her.

The left side of Tuck’s face looked red and swollen. A path the width of a large hand had been torn straight down the front of her uniform shirt from her left shoulder to her waist. Her bra was still intact, however. She didn’t seem to be scratched. The long flap of torn shirt hung almost to her knee.

“Clyde did that?” Dana asked.

“Sharp claws. It’s okay. He pretty much missed. Look, I need you.” Tuck squeezed her arm. “We keep some spare bulbs down here.”

“Let’s go get em.”

“I already did. Come on.” She led Dana over to a steamer trunk. Bending down, she lifted one end. “Just light my way.”