Ghost Hunters (7 page)

G
uttering blue flames flickered to life around the edges of a bowl-shaped cavern, shedding a grimy light that sent shadows dancing across the floor and up the walls. Dick blinked against the weird light and held his gun out, stabbing it into the shadows before him. The weapon kept the freaks at bay; they were filthy mutants with a taste for blood, but they definitely knew what a gun was. Dick’s worry was that soon they wouldn’t care.

They’d gathered before a freakish altar, a massive thing fashioned from countless bones and crudely sharpened blades. The altar had the shape of an enormous bat’s head, its bestial snout filled with sword-like teeth and eyes that bled blue fire. Luminous silver smoke drifted from the shrine’s mouth to form a gauzy cloud around the freaks’ heads. They sucked it in then blew it out along with a murmuring chant.

Amy and Randall helped each other back to their feet. There was a gash across Amy’s forehead that drooled blood into her eyes like a crimson veil. Randall kept trying to get a look at his back, which Dick could see was striped with a trio of long, red slashes. More of the pale people were coming down the slope behind them, grinning in the blue light.

“I told you,” Amy started, but Dick’s sharp glare knocked the rest of the words out of her mouth.

Randall was panting and turning in place. He used the light as a weapon, driving their pursuers back. They clenched their eyes against the blinding white, and howled in frustration. But Dick knew it wouldn’t take them long to recover from the light, and then they were all fucked.

“We have to get out of this room,” he whispered. “There’s another ledge that winds up the far side over there. I think we can get ahead of them and go up that way.”

The ledge was a hundred feet away and no more than two feet wide. It started at the bottom of the bowl before ascending sharply and looping around the perimeter to the room. He couldn’t see where it led, but he needed to believe it was somewhere better than down here with a bunch of albino bat-faced people who wanted to eat his face.

Amy clenched his free arm so tight it tingled with the pain of pinched nerves. “What about Mickey?”

Dick’s anger flared at the reminder of their missing crew member. “You want to go to war with all of these right now?”

The mutants were shuffling closer together, their chant gathering steam and growing louder. Dick could feel them winding up to attack. If they rushed him, even the gun wasn’t going to do them any good.

Amy stared at him, her fingers digging into his bicep. “I
knew
you’d do this. You’re going to run away, because it’s easier, because it makes things simpler. When we get back home, that’ll be two less people to share the cash. Two dead people who can’t accuse you of the bullshit you did that pushed us all down here in the first place.”

He tore his arm out of her grasp and his hand froze, poised to strike. That
hadn’t
been what he was thinking, not at all, but there was no sense in denying the sense of Amy’s words. They’d pooled their money, went deep into debt, for this one last stab at fame and glory. Except, things had gone wrong, and not everyone made it out.

“I tried,” he spat at Amy. “But now’s the time to run. We don’t even know where she is.”

Amy’s finger stabbed toward the smoking altar then rose to the ceiling above it. Ropes hung from D-rings mounted in the cavern’s ceiling, and bodies dangled from them. He could see Mickey’s blonde ponytail swaying above the blue flames. “We
do
know where she is.”

Dick flicked his eyes back to the freaks on the slope behind them. They’d made it to the cavern floor and were edging toward the light, shielding their eyes with their hands and
ticktickticking.
The chanters were building up for their attack, too, edging forward and stamping their feet. Their raised voices grated on Dick’s ears. They still avoided the gun as he moved it from side to side, and none were willing to step into the white glare of the camera, but that was all about to change. Rage was replacing their fear. Time was up. “Okay,” he said, licking his lips. “There’s only one way we can make this work.”

Amy and Randall gathered closer and Dick felt sick to his stomach. After all they’d been through, they still saw him as the boss, as the man who’d get them through this. He started laying out his plan. “When I say the word, I want the two of you to run for that ledge over there. Just go, don’t wait for me. I’m going after Mickey.”

Amy looked at him, studied his face. “There’s no way that works.”

Dick shrugged. “I don’t have any other ideas. It’s the only chance Mickey has. This shit is all my fault anyway, right? I’ll be the one to try and get her.”

Randall turned the light on Dick for a moment. “Good luck, boss.”

“Yeah,” Dick muttered to himself, “sure.”

Then to his crew, “We’re only going to have one shot at this. On three.”

Amy took off on two, head down, arms and legs pumping for all she was worth. Dick had counted on her trying to get a head start. Randall started to run, and Dick reached out and ripped the camera from his shoulder.

The cameraman lost his footing, and Dick heard Randall’s knee give out with a liquid pop. Randall shouted for Amy, but she was almost to the ledge. Her sudden break for it had sent the chanting mutants into a frenzy and the whole pack of them were on her tail.

Dick shone the light on the mutants that had been following the crew, startling them with the sudden blast of light. “Sorry, Randy,” he said then broke into a run.

He kept the light trained on the nearest freaks, using it to give him the slight edge he needed. He hit the slope running, and once he reached the top of the slope, he paused to train the still-shooting camera on the action behind him. The horde of mutants chased Amy, pouring up the ledge after her in a white tide of flailing limbs and snapping teeth. She had a lead on them, but Dick didn’t think it would last long. This was the monsters’ home, after all, and they were mad as hell that anyone had intruded on their territory. “It didn’t have to be this way,” he muttered. Then, “Fuck you, Amy.”

He aim the camera at Randall, who struggled across the cavern floor toward Dick. His bad leg trailed behind him, and tears streamed down Randall’s face, leaving his cheeks pink and shiny. Dick focused the camera on Randall, soaking in the scene’s hopelessness and fear. There’d never been anything like this on television before. Lonny was going to lose his fucking mind. Sure, they’d have to make some edits, clean up some things so Dick didn’t end up in jail, but this was all gold. Dick felt a weight lifting off his shoulders. The nightmare was over.

Something slammed into the camera, twisting it off Dick’s shoulder and driving him back into the tunnel. A fist grazed his forehead, and he backpedaled, struggling to keep the camera from falling to the floor. If he didn’t get out of here with the footage, then all of this really would be for nothing.

The girl he’d shot surged after him, her wounded arm flopping at her side. “Kill ya,” she grunted and slashed at his face with her fingernails.

Dick wasn’t fast enough to dodge the attack, and her nails ripped bloody furrows down his cheek. The pain was electrifying, a raw, animal reminder that he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

The wounded girl came at him again, ropes of saliva dangling from her gnashing, bloody teeth. She scratched his camera arm, drawing more blood then lunged at him with her mouth open.

Dick shouted in surprise and jammed the pistol into her mouth. Her front teeth sheared off on the gun’s barrel, flying away like ivory toothpicks. She gagged as the barrel slammed into the back of her throat and her eyes widened in pained surprise.

He pulled the trigger, and the back of her head erupted in a fountain of gore. The camera’s light caught chunks of scalp, greasy hair still clinging to them, fly through the darkness. Scraps of yellowing bone and globs of splattered gray matter seemed frozen in flight, captured by the blazing light.

The girl sagged to her knees, dragging Dick’s gun arm down. Her death convulsions had locked her teeth around the barrel, holding it captive inside her ruined head. Her face was turned up toward him, eyes bulging from the pressure of the bullet’s passage, chipped teeth framing the barrel. He leaned against the wall and shoved her off with a boot, grimacing at the squeal of her broken teeth against the metal barrel. She fell to the floor, face down, revealing the gory crater in the back of her head. Dick stared down at the dead girl, revulsion and pride at war in his gut.

Dick turned and headed into the tunnel, ignoring Randall’s cries for help and Amy’s echoing screams.

A
my spat out her gum and ran until her lungs were on fire. The ledge was narrow and the slope severe, which made every step a neck-breaking hazard. She didn’t have any time to consider the danger, though, and kept running as fast as she could. Her lead was narrow to begin with, she didn’t know how long it would take her pursuers to catch her.

She hated Dick for stealing from her, for dragging them all down into this subterranean hell.
If I ever see you again,
she swore,
I’ll chew your goddamned face off.

The thought of killing Dick put an extra spring in her step. She could do this. She was young and healthy, in the best shape of her life. She hadn’t spent two hours on the treadmill every day just to keep her ass tight for the cameras. She could outrun the pack of cannibals. She
would
.

If the blue light didn’t run out. The blue made everything seem flat and washed out, but it was better than the darkness. As she ran up the ledge, Amy realized the tunnel ahead of her was not bathed in the same flickering glow. She fumbled in her front pocket for the little LED flashlight she always carried, losing precious seconds as her hand stuck in her pocket and she had to hobble instead of rushing headlong away from her pursuers. She pinched the little light’s case, and a narrow cone of pure white chased the darkness from her path.

Fingers scraped at her ankles as one of the freaks leaped at Amy. The contact threw her off her stride, sending her stumbling ahead. She could feel them behind her, so close it would only take one more stumble to end her life. Being so close to death pushed Amy beyond her limits, lent strength to her legs that she’d never known she had. She found herself drinking from some deep well of desperate energy that had always been inside her, hidden beneath the surface, waiting for circumstances to reveal it to her.

As she ran, lungs pumping with practiced efficiency, flesh moving beyond the reach of pain, Amy changed. The mask she wore, all wide smiles and bright eyes, cracked and fell away to reveal a feral snarl. The thin layer of her humanity peeled away to reveal the animal within, the bestial essence of survival. Amy liked it.

But she knew she couldn’t run forever. She had to be smarter, not just faster, than the things on her tail. She stopped holding the light on the ground ahead of her and began flicking it on the ceiling and walls, looking for some nook to duck into, a side passage to escape down. She saw it at last, a narrow defile ahead and to her left. As quick as the light hit it, she swung it away. She had to surprise the assholes on her tail if this was going to work.

One step, two steps. She killed the light, hoping the image she held in her mind’s eye was accurate.

Three steps, four steps. Amy lunged ahead, giving herself just that little bit more distance to put her plan into action.

Five steps, six steps. She didn’t waste precious seconds turning into the defile, instead she threw herself sideways with all the strength she had left in her legs.

For a moment, Amy was airborne, hurtling through the darkness away from her pursuers. Then her shoulder clipped the wall and she was biting her tongue hard enough to draw blood. She struggled to remain silent to just stay where she’d fallen, praying to whatever god was listening that the freaks would just run past her hiding spot.

She could hear their feet padding away from her, the clicking sound that guided them on their hunts. It had worked, she’d tricked them, and now they were chasing down a dead trail. She wanted to sob with relief, but was too terrified a straggler would hear her and come finish her off. Instead, she held her face in her hands and curled tight against the stone wall, trying to calm herself enough to take the next step.

When her breathing slowed and her pulse no longer pounded in her ears, Amy dared to use her light. She held it tight in her hand, the tip pressed tight against the webbing between her forefinger and thumb. She squeezed the light and prayed it wouldn’t be the last thing she ever did.

Dim red light shown through the thin skin of her hand. A pale face, gaunt and hollow eyed, stared back at her. Its breath reeked of corruption, a sticky sweet scent that clung to Amy’s nostrils. She clenched her teeth against another scream and swung a punch at the face.

Her fist plowed through rotting flesh, scraping away foul meat from the bone underneath. Amy’s hand came away covered in rot, but the face hadn’t moved. She released a deep, shuddering sigh and played the light over the corpse. It had been a cop of some kind judging by its rot-stained clothes. There was a red-rimmed bullet hole over its heart, and its legs splayed out in front of it. Amy stood and kicked it over with her foot.

She kept the flashlight clenched in her fist so it only shed a subdued red glow. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to light her path if she moved slowly. There were more corpses here, bodies scattered around and tangled together. More importantly, she found a hunting rifle twined in the arms of another fallen deputy. The stock was slick with rot, but the barrel looked clean and straight. Amy was no marksman, but she’d worked for a couple of years as an intern on
Sasquatch Stalkers
and had learned the basics of operating a rifle.

The magazine had three rounds in it; not enough to put a serious dent in the monsters if they caught up to her, but more than enough for the one monster she really wanted to hurt.

“I’m coming for you, Dick,” she whispered to herself and crept into the darkness.