grasp, clenched tightly against his chest. I pushed the bat through Mac’s beard and slid it right up against his Adam’s apple … then I shoved him hard against the floor. He gagged as I applied more pressure.
I bent forward and rested my weight against the bat’s handle.
“I owe you a fucking shot to the head,” I hissed. “And if you make me do it, I’m not going to be laying down no fucking bunt. I’m going to drive your head out of the motherfucking park.”
His hand loosened on Taylor’s neck, and she pulled her way free, immediately recoiling in disgust against the tunnel’s far wall. She let out another sob and buried her face in her hands. I kept the bat extended out toward Mac as I moved carefully to her side. Before I could put my arm around her shoulder, however, she pulled back once again, shaking her head.
“No, please,” Mac said from his place on the ground. The crazed expression suddenly fell from his face, and his eyes filled with tears. “Please … You’ve got to just … Please!… Amanda … Amanda.” And his eyes spun back toward the brightly lit room on the other side of the threshold.
I stayed where I was, but Floyd stepped over Mac’s legs and looked out into the room. “Dean,” he said, looking back at me after a handful of seconds, his eyes wide, his voice filled with wonder. “You’ve gotta see this shit.”
Floyd and Charlie kept an eye on Mac while I peered into the room.
It was a disorienting sight.
I barely recognized Amanda. She was standing among a crowd of wolves on the far side of an oversized hub. They were pressed tightly around her; it looked like she was standing waist-deep in a furry, attentive pool. Since we’d last seen her, she’d lost all of her clothing, and she was now dressed in nothing but streaks of mud—intricate markings, purposefully drawn, like patterns of pigment in fur—across her cheekbones, her breasts, her belly, down the length of her arms.
I took a step into the room, and the pack of wolves tensed forward. A low groan filled the hub, a faint subvocal growl filled with warning and menace. Bright light was flooding into the room from one of the connecting corridors, and two dozen sets of fangs glittered sharply in the orange glow. I felt a twinge of pain in my hand and pulled back instinctively.
Amanda moved her arm, reaching forward slightly, then pulled it back toward her stomach. In response, the wolves settled onto their haunches, sitting almost in unison.
“Amanda?” I said.
She didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide, curious, but completely uncomprehending. They were the eyes of an animal. An attentive animal.
“Amanda, it’s me, Dean. Remember me? Remember taking me to the park, finding the tunnel. The wolves? Remember looking for your dog—” I tried to remember its name, finally managing to fish it up from the depths of my memory. “Remember Sasha?”
Her brow crinkled slightly at the name, and she reached down to touch the wolf at her side. The wolf showed me its teeth briefly—a tiny warning—then glanced up at Amanda’s face. It raised a strangely jointed paw and touched her side, as if it were offering her comfort.
And there was silence. And the room was still. Her face flickered from that tiny questioning expression back to placid calm.
I raised the camera to my eye and took a quick shot. It was an amazing, improbable scene, and my hands just reacted—a nervous gesture, really, something to occupy my eye, my hands, and a detached part of my mind.
“She’s gone,” Taylor said in the tunnel behind me. “Mac and I have been here for the last fifteen minutes. He’s been quizzing her, coaxing, trying to get her to remember who we are. Who she is.” There was anger and disgust in her voice. “But she doesn’t remember. They all just stand there. And they won’t let us get anywhere near.” She hawked up a glob of phlegm, and I heard her spit into the dirt at my back.
“Face it: Amanda’s gone,” Taylor repeated. “And there’s just this … this empty shell in her place. This animal.”
“No!” Mac roared. He rolled up onto his knees and pushed me aside, nearly sending me sprawling to the floor. He moved fast. “Amanda!” he yelled.
None of us tried to stop him. None of us saw it coming.
In a matter of moments, he was up on his feet and colliding with the wolves, trying to wade through the sea of fur and muscles and teeth, trying to reach Amanda on the other side. I saw her cringe back in fear, and the wolves surged forward, putting themselves between Mac and their mistress.
And then they were on him.
The room filled with growling and a single shrill howl. Fangs flashed as jaws clamped down on Mac’s arms and legs, pulling him to the ground. Shaking muzzles. Tearing flesh. I couldn’t hear him over the scrabbling claws and deep-throated growls, but I saw his mouth flash open. I don’t know what he was trying to say. I don’t know if he was trying to call out Amanda’s name once again, or if it was just an incoherent howl of pain and anger as the wolves tore chunks of flesh from his body. I saw one angry muzzle dive in and clench shut around his face, locking tight and shredding his flesh back and forth before finally pulling back with a mouthful of cheek and lip, leaving behind blood and a glimpse of pale white bone. Then Mac was gone, lost beneath a blanket of writhing fur.
The frenzy went on for nearly a minute before Amanda stepped forward into the edge of the fray. She made a noise at the back of her throat. It wasn’t a growl, more like an oscillating whine. The pack slowed its frenzy, then backed away one by one. The final wolf had a large chunk of Mac’s arm dangling from its blood-drenched muzzle as it stepped back.
Amanda didn’t even glance at the slab of shredded meat and jutting bone. She just turned, and the entire pack turned with her. They ran into one of the connecting corridors, soundless and graceful.
And they were gone.
I think it might have just been my imagination, but at the last moment, just before she disappeared from sight, it looked like Amanda dropped to all fours and started bounding forward on hands and feet. In that blur of activity, however, I couldn’t be sure.
I stood at the threshold and watched as the last of Amanda’s pack disappeared into the darkness. Then it was quiet.
I could feel Charlie, Floyd, and Taylor in the space behind me. Standing there in shock. But I didn’t turn around and look. I didn’t want to see their horrified faces.
They’d be turned toward me, I knew, looking to me for direction. But I didn’t have the answers they were looking for. I didn’t have a clue. What I did have was a splitting headache. I had a lump in my throat and a small animal turning somersaults in my stomach. But no answers. No ideas.
Mac was dead. That was about all I knew. He was dead, and he couldn’t have been any deader. Nothing but a disjointed slab of meat piled in the center of the floor.
But Taylor was safe. Thank God, Taylor was safe.
I looked down at the baseball bat in my hands. Disgusted, I tossed it aside.
After nearly a minute, Charlie stepped up behind me. “See that corridor?” he whispered into my ear. His hand shot forward, pointing to one of the connecting tunnels. It was filled with flickering orange light. “That’s fire down there,” he said. “We must be near the mushroom. The army’s burning it from the ground.” He paused for a moment, letting his outstretched hand drop back down to his side. “It can’t be healthy down here … being so near.”
I inhaled deeply. I could taste the thick char of smoke in my lungs. I hadn’t noticed it before. I’d been distracted—what with Amanda and the wolves, with Mac and his violent death. I coughed deeply and expelled a large clump of phlegm.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, turning away from the room. “We got what we came for. We got Taylor. Let’s get back to the surface.”
Taylor was standing at my shoulder when I turned, and I nearly ran into her. The dirt on her face was
