“I can hear something.” Sandra’s throat was so dry it came out raspy. “It’s not far.”
Maddie did her best not to tremble, especially with Sam’s hand on her shoulder. “We’ll be okay,” she said, more to placate herself than the girl behind.
“Maddie, faster!” Sandra shouted.
“Shit.” Maddie was already pushing ahead quicker than she was comfortable with. “Hold tight.” She had her hands out in front and continually swept them back and forth, making sure she didn’t run into anything face-first. She was close to a blind panic, lurching forward, expecting every next step to be her last before she plummeted into the depths of a crater. She ripped open two knuckles as they collided with a small outcropping of rocks on her left. She hoped she hadn’t broken bones, but she was more concerned that she’d now left a blood scent for whatever was chasing them to follow.
Get it together, Maddie internalized. She stepped awkwardly and, as her right knee hyper-extended, she received the rude shock of pain from her body telling her she’d done something wrong and that she should quit doing it. She was walking gingerly, one hand pressed to her midsection as she did her best to stop the flow of blood dripping from her ragged fingers. Her body turned to the side as she struck the wall with her hip. She adjusted, thinking she’d drifted too far over, but she’d moved only half as far as she felt she needed to when her other hip struck. It took her a moment to realize that the tunnel was quickly narrowing. “No. No. No.” She was getting frantic as the walls were quite literally closing in on the group. There were grunts and gasps of surprise as those behind her began to strike the walls as well.
Maddie had no choice but to slow down, even as the noise behind got louder; it was the scream of an animal on the hunt, one very sure of its ability to overpower its prey. Stealth was no longer required. Maddie had another thought that perhaps they were being herded, driven into the waiting teeth of more animals to the front. It was a hunting tactic that had been used ever since one creature decided to eat another. Suddenly, she screamed out as the world around her changed. For a brief moment she felt as if something had taken hold of her very soul as she sped toward an inexplicable evil.
2
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
The woman standing in the clockwork room looked like she’d been beaten, chewed up, and spat out. Dust-covered, grubby overalls. Blood pouring from grazed knuckles. Curly red hair barely contained under her cap. An overpowering smell of oil and grease. Jenny followed her to the end of the corridor and shouted after her. “Wait…where did you come from? How the hell did you get in there?”
“Wish I fucking knew,” the woman shouted back, not stopping. Jenny ran after her, only catching up once she’d gone through a fire door and started down the staircase.
“Wait,” Jenny said again, and she grabbed the woman’s shoulder.
“I don’t know you. It would be a good idea if you got your hands off me.”
“Look, I just—”
With a show of force that caught Jenny completely off-guard, their positions were reversed in an instant. The woman shoved Jenny back against the wall, and now she was the one asking the questions. “Who in hell’s name are you, and how the hell did you get here? And why is there a goddamn staircase on the moon…?”
Suddenly distracted, she relaxed her grip and stopped talking. Then she looked past Jenny before letting her go completely and climbing back up the few steps she’d just descended. She stopped in front of a two meter-square window and looked out over an uninterrupted, picture-postcard scene below: the beach at Surfers Paradise on a gloriously sunny early evening, packed with crowds soaking up the day’s last rays. She watched blue waves crashing onto the shore, kids playing without a care in the low surf that stretched away into the distance farther than she could see. Runners pounded along the strip of sand, alternately drenched in sunlight then hidden by long skyscraper shadows that reached for the ocean. Beyond the beach, traffic meandered lazily along the streets as offices closed for the day and restaurants and bars began to fill. Birds raced home through the cloudless sky overhead. It all looked so damn normal, except that it was all completely impossible.
“What were you saying about the moon?” Jenny asked. The woman glanced back at her over her shoulder.
“Where am I?”
“Australia, but—”
“I’ve been living on the moon for years. How can I be in Australia?”
“No one’s been to the moon since the seventies.”
“Well I was there five minutes ago…”
The temptation to think this woman had been driven mad by the strength of the sun out here was strong, but Jenny detected a note of real conviction in her voice. She didn’t know what to say. Her own story was no less far-fetched. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but a few hours ago I was standing at the top of the tallest building in London, fighting for my life.”
“London? As in London, England?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit. That place burned up years ago. It was one of the first cities to fall after the war began.”
“Which war?”
“The war. The big one. The final one, remember? Are you a couple of cylinders shy of a muscle car or something?”
“Are you talking about the Bleed?”
“The what?”
“I really think we need to talk. Will you come back upstairs?”
“We can talk here. Why should I go anywhere with you? You seem unbalanced.”
“Says the woman who says she’s from the moon.”
“Blow me,” she said, and she tried to push past Jenny and head back down the stairs. Jenny blocked her
