Funland (47 page)

He sat up fast and stared at the blackness in front of him. He blinked to make sure his eyes were open.

All around him were sounds of struggle.

Off the floor, he thought. It’s the worst place to be.

He got to his knees. Someone tumbled against his back, knocking him forward. He scrambled, kicking at the body, freeing his legs. Gasped as his face met skin. He lurched backward. A hand clamped his raw chin and tried to shove him away. As pain streaked from his wound, a voice in front of him said, “Jeremy?”

The hand flew from his chin to his shoulder and pulled him closer. Shiner flung her arms around him.

Holding each other, they struggled to their feet. They took a few staggering steps and bumped the rubber of a wall.

Off to the side, a vertical band of light appeared. Faint yellowish light. Suddenly the band spread wide.

“A door!” Shiner whispered.

Beyond it, a hallway glowed with candlelight.

Someone lurched through the doorway, escaping.

“Let’s go!” Jeremy gasped.

Hanging on to each other, they rushed for the door. The way ahead of them was cluttered with the faint silhouettes of bodies struggling on the floor, others kneeling, some up and staggering. They dodged, leapt. Hands grabbed at them, and they kicked and twisted their way free. Someone lunged in from Shiner’s side. Her elbow sent the troll hurling backward.

A dark shape blocked the doorway.

Jeremy threw himself at it.

Hands clutched his jacket, yanked him forward, and flung him into the lighted corridor. Tanya caught him. Turning away from her, he saw Samson tug Shiner out of the black room.

Cowboy was leaning against a wall, Liz sobbing against his chest.

The door slammed shut.

Samson tried the knob, then hit the door with his shoulder. It didn’t give. He rammed it again.

“For Godsake, don’t!” Tanya blurted.

“Karen’s not out.” He shot his foot forward, smashing it against the door just beside the knob. Still the door stayed shut.

Samson turned around and leaned against the door frame, shaking his head. His face was twisted with an expression of horror.

Shiner put a hand over her mouth. She stared at Jeremy. Her eyes looked wide and dazed. She was breathing hard. Her white blouse was open to her belly, twisted and hanging off her left shoulder. Her shoulder was streaked with scratches. She had a bloody handprint on the white cup of her bra.

Jeremy went to her. Gently he lifted the blouse onto her shoulder and drew the front shut. He put his arms around her. She was panting for air, trembling.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Vaguely he wondered why he had gone to Shiner instead of Tanya.

It felt good, though.

“Poor Karen,” she whispered.

“Let’s worry about us,” Tanya said from somewhere behind Jeremy.

Shiner squeezed herself tightly against him.

Then they separated. Shiner took hold of his hand.

Cowboy and Liz were still embracing. He had lost his hat. He still had his knife, though. It was a folding buck knife with a wicked-looking blade. The blade was slick with blood. So was the hand that held it flat against the small of Liz’s back while his other hand stroked her hair.

A rear pocket of her jeans hung like a flap below her rump. She had lost one of her sneakers.

Except for his mussed hair, Samson looked as if he hadn’t been touched. But his arms were wrapped tightly around his chest, and Jeremy could see that he was shaking. If he still had his knife, it didn’t show.

Tanya’s knife was at her side, clenched in her right hand. The sleeve of her sweatshirt was drenched in blood to her elbow. The front of her sweatshirt, dark and sodden, clung to her breasts and belly. Her pants, too, looked drenched in blood from her waist to her knees.

A corner of her mouth turned up. “Don’t worry, Duke. It’s not mine. Just this,” she added, and touched a knuckle to a torn crescent of skin over her left cheekbone. That side of her face was sheathed with blood. Trickles spilled off her jaw and ran down her neck.

He went to her, pulling the wadded handkerchief out of his pocket. He took the razor blade from it, dropped the blade into his shirt pocket, and gave the handkerchief to her.

“Thanks,” she muttered, pressing it to her wound. “Guess what, Duke? Now you’ve got a good excuse for your face. You can tell your mom the trolls nailed you.”

“If I ever see her again,” he said.

“Don’t worry, you will.” Looking toward the others, Tanya said, “We’ll all get out of here. Right?”

Only Samson answered. He said, “Yeah, sure.”

“Let’s get to it.” Tanya waited while the others gathered in close to her. Shiner took Jeremy’s hand again. Her mouth twitched as she tried to smile. There was dread in her eyes.

Tanya took the lead.

This section of hallway had no barred openings in its walls. There was no sign of trolls.

Not until Jeremy’s shoes scraped a metal grating on the floor and he looked down and saw the blur of a face. He sprang off the grille. “They’re under us!” he blurted.

Samson, standing on a similar panel just ahead of him, leapt forward.

Jeremy looked back. Cowboy swooped Liz up. Cradling her in his arms, he stepped onto the grate. He danced on it, stomping it with his boots.

Jeremy and Shiner continued through the hallway. Beneath the next grille were two faces. The trolls watched in silence as they took long strides and cleared the grate without stepping on it.

Jeremy heard Cowboy, still back there, prancing on the first grate. “I’ll be durned if I’m not starting to—”

A deafening clap pounded Jeremy’s ears. Even as he whirled around, he knew he would see Cowboy dropping through the floor, Liz in his arms.

But he was wrong.

Cowboy still stood on the grate. Liz was falling. He was bringing up his knife as something swept down at him.

A man. A naked burly man with a hairy back and a bald head. Swinging down headfirst like a live pendulum from the trapdoor in the ceiling. Ropes around his ankles. A meat cleaver in each hand.

He yelled, “Wheeeee!” as he flew toward Cowboy.

Cowboy hopped backward. The cleavers flashed, trying for Liz. But she was flat on the floor. The blades chopped the air above her, missing by inches. The man began his upward arc, going for Cowboy with the cleavers.

Cowboy lunged at him and leapt backward again. The body jerked, twisted on its ropes like a swing knocked crooked, and crashed against the wall. One of the cleavers sank into the wall. The other dropped to the floor.

Cowboy snatched that one up as the man swung downward. Swung over Liz, showering her. Swung toward Jeremy and Shiner, spinning. The handle of Cowboy’s knife jutted from his throat. He spouted blood and urine.

Cowboy jumped over Liz and threw himself against the man. Slammed him against the wall. Went at him with the cleaver. Shiner twisted her head away as Cowboy hacked him. The blow split him down the middle. Intestines slopped out like coils of wet snakes.

Jeremy doubled over, retching.

His vomit cascaded onto the grate at his feet.

Someone below him gasped, “Ugh!”

When he finished and straightened up, Cowboy was helping Liz to her feet. The body hung in the middle of the hallway, swaying and turning. Jeremy didn’t let himself focus on it. Instead, he watched Cowboy and Liz step past it.

Cowboy had a cleaver in one hand, his knife in the other. Liz held the second cleaver.

As she stepped past the body, she gave it a whack in the chest. The blow severed a small section of hanging guts, which fell past the man’s face and hit the floor with a soft wet smack.

Jeremy gagged and covered his mouth. This time, he didn’t throw up.

Cowboy grinned. His eyes and teeth were white. The rest of him was red. He looked as if a tub of gore had been dumped over his head. Jeremy could
smell
it. “Weak stomach, Duke?”

“You sure creamed him.”

“Massacred the son of a whore, huh? No quarter.”

“Thought you were goners,” Samson said.

“Are you both all right?” Tanya asked. Her voice came from close behind Jeremy.

“I reckon I could use a bath,” Cowboy said.

Liz laughed and slapped his chest. Blood flew off his shirt like red dust.

“Okay,” Tanya said. “Let’s keep going. Everybody look sharp. God knows what we’re gonna run into next.”

They started to walk. Jeremy stepped on gratings without any hesitation. They all stepped on the grates. As if the weird attack and Cowboy’s slaughter of the swinging man had numbed them to such matters as trolls lurking below their feet.

They watched the ceiling. They watched the walls.

They came to the end of the hall.

On the right was a closed door. On the left was a dark opening.

Tanya pulled a candle from its holder, knelt in front of the opening, and leaned forward. The candle and her head vanished for a moment. Then she stood up. “I don’t know,” she said.

“What is it?”

“A slide.”

“A slide?” Samson asked.

“This is a fucking
funhouse,”
Liz reminded him.

“Where does it go?”

“It goes down,” Tanya said. “I couldn’t see much of it. But it should take us down to the ground floor.”

“Yeah,” Samson said. “And whatever’s waiting for us there.”

“Better than being up here.”

“Why don’t we try that door?” Shiner asked.

“Good thought,” Liz said.
“You
try it,”

“No, don’t,” Jeremy warned.

“I’ll try the slide,” Tanya said.

“Don’t,” Jeremy told her.

“What’re we supposed to do, stay here? Let me borrow that chopper of yours, Cowboy.”

He held it out. Samson took it from him. “I’ll go down first,” he said. “You guys wait up here till you hear from me.”

Tanya kissed his mouth.

Jeremy expected to feel a pang of jealousy, but he didn’t. The guy deserves a kiss, he thought. Better him than me.

“Good man,” Tanya said. “This is one I owe you.”

He made a sick-looking smile. Turning away, he sat on the floor. He scooted into the opening. Tanya gave him the candle. “It’ll probably blow out anyway,” he said, but he kept it. He clutched the cleaver against his chest, hunched forward, and dropped out of sight.

Tanya knelt and peered in after him.

“Get ready to go fast,” she said. “He’ll need us.”

Suddenly a shriek welled out of the opening. Not a shriek of fright, but a high ragged cry of agony.

“Samson!” Tanya yelled.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Samson wailed. “Oh, mother of…Ahhhh! Ahhhh!”

“What is it?” Tanya called.

“I’m…I’m…God,
it hurts!”

“Should we come down?”

“No!
No!
For Godsake!”

“Maybe the door,” Shiner said. She squeezed Jeremy’s arm, then rushed across the hallway.

“Wait!” he yelled.

She yanked the door open and lurched back fast.

She whirled around, gasping, as the troll sprang out. A gawky gray-faced man with a wild black beard. He grabbed the back of Shiner’s blouse and yanked her off her feet. Jeremy leapt to save her. She was falling backward, eyes bulging, hands reaching out for him. A cleaver, apparently thrown by Liz, flipped end over end and flashed past the man’s head, just missing him, and vanished into the dark room at his back. Jeremy’s fingers grazed Shiner’s fingers. They flew away from him. He cried out, “No!” as she was hurled into the room. The door struck his upper arm, knocking him sideways, and slammed shut.

An instant before he threw himself against the door, Jeremy heard the clack of a sliding bolt. He clutched the knob, twisted it, tugged at it, crying “No! Let her out! Let her out, you bastard!”

He pounded the door, smashed at it with his shoulder, kicked at it.

The door stayed shut.

He sank to his knees, weeping.

Forty-two

Seconds after hearing the faint sound of the whistle, Robin saw a kid run out onto the boardwalk. He was the one, she guessed, who’d been left behind by the others to stand watch for the cops.

That’s what the whistle meant.

The cops are coming.

I just have to last, she thought. They’ll get me down.

If they know I’m here.

The kid was
so
far away.

He stopped in the middle of the boardwalk. There he turned around in circles, probably wondering where his friends had gone. He looked like a little kid lost in a supermarket, trying to find his mom.

If he was calling, Robin couldn’t hear him.

His head swung around as he glanced over his shoulder toward the Funland entrance. Then he ran straight ahead. Robin saw him start down the beach stairs. After that, her left arm blocked her view.

She looked down again.

No sign of the three trolls. But she knew where they had to be. Behind her. Probably on the Ferris wheel’s platform. Probably trying to start the thing going.

She wished she could see what was happening back there.

A handcuff suddenly slipped up her left hand, scraping over the knuckle of her thumb. Her stomach seemed to drop out from under her. Gasping, she willed her fist to clench.

Her fingers tingled with the effort.

The cuff slipped up her hand.

Christ!

Her fingers hooked the curved rim of the bracelet, and she held on, heart suddenly thundering, feet kicking.

Now!
her mind shouted.
Now or never! Christ!

Right hand balled in a tight fist, left hand clinging to the cuff, she bent her arms at the elbows and drew herself upward. Higher, higher. The edge of the footrest rubbed against her rump, then against the backs of her thighs. Her muscles ached. The cuffs felt like knife blades pressing into her fingers and fist. She whimpered and groaned, pumped her legs as if trying to climb the rungs of a ladder that wasn’t there. The gondola rocked, its footrest nudging her forward and easing away, swinging her.

Slowly she rose until her bleeding left wrist was in front of her eyes. Then she came to her fingers squeezed tight over the curved steel of the bracelet, her other hand pinched inside the right cuff. She forced herself higher. Her eyes were inches from the connecting chain. Higher. Up to the safety bar. Higher, until the bar was even with her chin.