Alex was about to respond—something along the lines of shut up—when a droning sound distracted him. A distant car alarm?
“Oh crap,” David said, looking to the side of the building they had just come from. A moaning and shuffling sound came from around the corner.
“Well, that’s great!” Nicole said, throwing her arms in the air. “Now they’re gonna get to the easy door!” She stomped her way across the lot, past the boys, glaring at them as she passed. She looked back only once, and it wasn’t to either her brother or Alex. “Come on, girl!” she shouted in a moderately pleasant tone to Shadow, who had been standing with her while her owner almost accidentally killed himself. The dog glanced to Alex, then back to the corner that the car-alarm noise had just come from, and quickly walked after Nicole, who resumed her stomp across the parking lot.
Alex watched them, then looked to David with a look that clearly said: Now what do we do?
“Don’t worry,” David said, turning Alex in the direction his sister had just gone. “There’s another way in. Just as easy ... well, maybe not exactly as easy, but you know, still pretty easy.”
“Oh, good,” Alex said, relieved that he had not doomed himself and the people who had just rescued him.
“Yeah,” David continued as they walked. “So, how are your legs? They okay?”
“Um ...” Alex kicked at the gravel beneath his feet. “Yeah, they’re fine. I mean, still kinda sore. As long as I don’t have to run a marathon or climb too high or something, I’ll be fine.”
“Oh,” David said, not making eye contact. “That’s good.”
After climbing the seven-foot fence, followed by a very flexible emergency rope ladder, Alex practically fell through the second floor window into a room full of junk; the new home that Nicole and David had made for themselves. He felt a mix of relief and pain. His legs ached. His arms ached. He was out of breath. He had the feeling that he might throw up, though he was unsure if that was from the exertion or the sounds coming from outside.
They had been followed. And it sounded like there were a lot of them.
Alex rubbed his legs—his knees mostly; they had smacked the wall through the rope ladder more than once on the climb. He wouldn’t cry—not when he had just met these people. As he massaged his legs, a realization hit him quite suddenly:
Shadow! She’s still down there! How will she—
“Okay—start pulling!”
David’s voice cut off his bleak realization that he had left his only surviving friend—his saviour—to face the mudmen on her own. Again. He turned quickly to the window. Nicole was tugging at a rope similar to the one that was being used as the trigger to the SMASHER! He rushed over, squeezing between her and the wall, caused her to grunt both in agitation and from the strain of whatever she was hoisting. He had to find Shadow.
She wasn’t far.
They had dragged her through a small opening in the fence that hooked into the wall of the building. Too small for a person to fit through, but it just allowed room for the dog. Now she dangled from the end of the rope, about ten feet from the window. David was still on the ground. He looked very anxious as his gaze moved between the dog being lifted and the fence, which was being pushed inward by over a dozen of the mudmen.
They seemed unsure why they could not get to David or the dog-on-a-rope, as if they didn’t know the fence was there. The ones in the front were getting mashed against the chain-links harder and harder by the ones behind them. Rusted edges of metal dug into their faces, leaving grid patterns in their black and red blood. They were mangling their hands trying to shove them through the far-too-small holes in an attempt to grab David, though he was several feet away.
Fortunately for David, the fence held them back, though if they kept pressing, or if more showed up and added to the pressure, it would soon collapse.
“Could you hurry, please?” he yelled up, shielding his eyes so he could better see Alex’s face. “I really don’t want to be down here with them!”
Shadow whimpered as she slowly inched toward the window, her legs dangling uselessly beneath her.
Alex turned to face Nicole. “Can’t you go any faster?”
Nicole stopped tugging and glared at him. “Look,” she said, her voice much calmer than Alex had expected from her expression. “We haven’t known each other very long, but I get the impression that you are ... how should I put this ... useless. And slow. And whiney. Pretty sure I don’t like you. Does that seem about right to you?”
Alex was dumbfounded. Who says stuff like that to someone they just met?
He was even more shocked when she shoved the rope into Alex’s hand and let go with a simple “here.”
The weight of the dog at the end of the rope—a little over 50 pounds the last time she had been to the vet—forced Alex to lurch toward the window. He let out a yelp and a grunt as Nicole walked away.
Alex heard Shadow whimpering and hated Nicole for possibly hurting her by letting her fall, even for just that split second. He also heard the sounds coming from the mudmen: sick moaning, like weak screams coming from each one of them. He wasn’t sure if it was just in his head, but he thought their voices were getting wetter. He pictured the pressure of the fence literally liquefying them and drowning them in their own blood.
He felt like he might throw up again.
“Come on, come on, come on!”
David’s calls brought him back to the moment. He tugged at the rope, though with much more difficulty than Nicole seemed to have. He knew that she was probably stronger than he was. Of course, she was older/bigger, he told himself, so he shouldn’t
