I thought about it for a while.
'Listen, 'I said. 'It seems to me that we've been running parallel to
the coastline so far, maybe moving a little inland. That sound right
to you?'
'I think so.'
'Then I think we should take the right. Seems to me that access to the
beachfront would be important to whoever the hell is in here. That
hole in the basement can't be his only exit. I'm thinking a hole in
the seawall, something like that.'
'Some way to collect food and water.' 'Right.'
'Let's try it.'
'I just hope to hell we don't find six more of these. You could get
pretty lost in here.'
We had lost the flies by now but we still had the stink. As we moved
on, though, I started to feel I had it right, because the air seemed
fresher, more redolent of the sea.
We were moving through short lengths of passageway- five steps in this
direction, ten in the next but I had the sense that we were basically
moving outward toward the rock face. Inside me all the troops were on
red alert, armed and watchful. So were Steven's.
Both of us amazed me.
Walking two abreast like that you could feel the pull of tension
between us; a strong, supple feeling. Strange. As though we shared
the same nervous system, he and I, impulses tugging two sets of
muscles, two structures of bone. I hardly knew him, really. But I
knew him then. And you could see why friendships are so easy to come
by in combat situations, why the loyalties are fierce ones and why you
avoid them if you can, because the trauma runs so deep when shell or
bullet shatters them forever. I didn't worry for Steven. I worried
for us.
ACK KET CHUM
We'd reach a corner and wait and listen, holding our flashlights close
to the ground. Then we'd throw the beams around the corner and I'd hit
the wall opposite us, pitchfork high and ready, while Steve waited to
crack somebody's skull with the axe handle.
I think we got the procedure off cops shows.
But it felt good and efficient anyway.
Four times we did this. Each time- nothing.
I was waiting, hoping to feel it like I'd felt it before -that sense of
something out there just out of reach and out of sight. Something big
and dangerous waiting for me and ready, just as I was ready for him
this time. I had my backup and my long pointed stick. I was ready.
The hell I was.
I hit the fifth wall. I was sure we were close now.
All the beam showed us was another passageway. Empty, silent.
The corridor was as hort one. Six steps maybe. We got halfway down
and then stopped. I don't know why we stopped. Butagain.it was
simultaneous. There was a moment there where all we did was look at
one another. Eyes like black little beads in our heads.
And I think we knew.
Something rough and jagged was happening to my heartbeat. I remember
he gave me a little smile. That same curl to the lip as when he was
being cute and ironic, only it wasn't that way this time. It was like
hello and good-bye all at once.
Just like that.
And between those things lay all life, all time, for both of us.
I turned my light to the ground. The walls loomed with shadows. I
stepped into them and threw my beam ahead of me.
And saw what was happening to Casey.
I had a brief impression of a large empty room with high rugged
ceilings
Pillars in the soft rock from roof to floor, pulled thin in the
middle
I ike strands of taffy Gleaming, dripping.
And Casey.
Propped up against one of them fifteen feet away from us, her bloodied
legs spread wide apart, their angle enclosing us within. Her eyes
wide, unblinking, flickering like candles in a wind. Seeing her a
punch to the solar plexus, a blinding physical shock.
For a moment I simply reeled.
It crouched beside her, its long black bony back to us. I could see
its head rise and fall with the lunge of backbone and muzzle and hear
the snap of teeth as it worried her.
Her eyes stared through it- through us too- boring back through the
tunnel and cellar and house into the woods beyond. At some point she'd
put on the army shirt. Now it was torn off completely at the shoulder
and dark with blood. There was blood on the blue halter beneath it and
more on the cream shorts and across her legs and naked stomach. Her
face was very pale.
The huge black dog lunged out of its crouch and snapped at her, very
near her face. A sound like the clap of two heavy sticks of hardwood.
Her pale blue eyes skittered like trapped birds.
For a moment we froze there.
The sheer awesome size of him was riveting.
I watched the muscles curl and pulse along his back, and he was
fascinating as a snake.
He snapped at her again and tore a flap of sleeve off the army shirt as
though it were tissue paper. I saw where it had chewed her, dragged
her along by the shoulder. The bare white arm looked useless now.
New blood began to well up where there was none before along the side
of her upper arm.
He'd taken more than the sleeve.
