The Midnight Tour (75 page)

She dodged a dirt wall, lurched around a curve, bumped a wall with her shoulder.

And came out of the curve to find a section ahead that was as straight as a school hallway. This was the place, Sandy realized, where the tunnel passed underneath Front Street.

It was awash in scarlet from still another spinning light.

She spotted Clyde in the distance, a human head atop the body of a beast.

Running away for all he was worth.

Fifty, sixty feet away and moving fast.

Sandy lurched to a halt and raised her pistol.
“POLICE!”
she shouted.
“STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!”

Twisting halfway around, Clyde looked back at her. Then he gasped out, “Don’t!” He raised his arms high, slowed down, turned until he was facing Sandy, and halted completely.

“Keep your hands up,” Sandy ordered. “Don’t move.” Right arm straight out, pistol aimed at his chest, she walked toward him.

“I give,” he gasped. “You got me.”

From behind Sandy came sounds of footfalls on the dirt floor. Then she heard quick, labored breathing.

She didn’t look back.

She walked straight toward Clyde. “Get down on your knees,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

As he sank to his knees, someone behind Sandy said, “Whoa!”

Another voice said, “Duuuude!”

“Shoot his ass!”

She didn’t look back, kept walking toward Clyde.

“You got him!” a woman blurted.

Still fifteen or twenty feet from Clyde, Sandy halted.

Keeping her pistol aimed at him, she spoke sharply. “I told you people to go back to the cellar. Now do what I say.”

“We wanta help,” said a kid.

“Is there any assistance we can give you?” asked an adult male voice. She supposed it belonged to the man in the bloody sweater.

“Thanks, but no. I want you all to leave. Go back to the cellar immediately.”

“Don’t!” Clyde blurted. “Don’t go! She’s gonna kill me! She’s gonna shoot me down in cold blood!”

“Is that true?” asked the man.

“Do it,” urged one of the teenagers.

“Kill his ass,” said the other.

“Maybe we’d
better stay
,” said a woman. Probably the man’s wife.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! NOW!”

“Don’t go! Please!”

Sandy heard someone rushing up behind her.

“Look out!” a kid warned.

She looked back. The chubby gal who’d lost her husband was lurching toward her, reaching out. “Gimme that!” the gal blurted. “
I’ll
kill him.”

“Nobody’s going to kill...”

“Oh, my God!” someone cried out.

“Shit!”.

“Look out!”

“HIT THE DECK, CLYDE HONEY!”

Sandy knew
that
voice.

Jerking her head forward, she saw Clyde throw himself flat on the dirt floor.

Beyond where he lay, Agnes Kutch waddled up the middle of the tunnel. Her hair looked rosy in the flashing red light. She had put on a lot of weight over the past seventeen years. As she trudged closer, her massive body flopped and bounced and swung inside her sheer nightgown.

Down low, clutched in both hands with its stock clamped against her bulging right side, Agnes carried something that looked very much like a Thompson submachine gun with a drum magazine.

“AGNES!”
Sandy shouted.
“DONT SHOOT! ITS ME! DROP THE... ”

“Gimme!” a woman squealed into Sandy’s ear. An arm reached past her face and a body slammed into her back, crashing her forward.

She stumbled, trying to keep her feet.

But it was no use.

As she began to fall, Agnes opened up. The Thompson jumped in her hands, spitting flame and bullets, deafening Sandy with its pounding roar.

On the way down, the gal on Sandy’s back tried to grab her wrist.

But suddenly jerked.

Blood exploded over the back of Sandy’s head and neck.

The weight of the woman smashed her against the tunnel floor. The impact knocked her breath out, but she kept her head up.

Agnes kept firing, her grin awash in the lightning of her muzzle flashes, her whole body jumping and shuddering as the Thompson jerked in her arms.

Flat on her belly, hurting all over, Sandy blinked her eyes clear of sweat and blood, stretched out her arm and fired a single shot.

It smacked Agnes in the forehead.

She keeled backward on stiff legs, raking the tunnel ceiling with gunfire, and landed flat on her back.

The Thompson went silent, stood erect by her side for a moment, then fell over sideways.

Sandy rolled out from under the body of the woman who’d wanted her pistol. The gal flopped over. She’d caught one in the right eye.

Clyde was still sprawled flat on the floor.

Sandy stood up.

She didn’t much want to turn around.

She turned around, anyway.

All of them were down, knocked sprawling by the heavy slugs of Agnes’s submachine gun: two teenaged boys, the man in the camel sweater and his wife. She looked at them only long enough to see that they’d been riddled beyond help. They were dead or dying.

She turned to Clyde.

“Get up,” she said.

He pushed himself to his knees.

Sandy saw that the big, fake penis was broken and dangling.

She walked toward him.

He raised his arms.

“I give,” he said, and smiled nervously.

She shot him in the face.

The blowback splashed her belly and breasts.

She watched him topple backwards.

Then she sighed and lowered the pistol.

And stood there.

I’d better go back to the others, she thought. But her body ached everywhere and she felt too weary to move.

Chapter Sixty-one

A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

Crawling through the narrow tunnel, Dana tried her best to keep up with Eve. Each time she raised her head, however, the naked legs and rear end of her friend were farther away.

She was tempted to call out, “Slow down.”

But it would be a waste of breath.

Eve wouldn’t slow down and wait for her; she was a woman an a mission, out to save the day.

Dana kept on crawling, sweating, huffing for air.

When she raised her head again, Eve was nowhere to be seen.

In front of her, the tunnel slanted upward.

Must be almost to the top
.

Eve was probably out already.

On knees and elbows, Dana struggled up the slope. Why wasn’t any light coming in from the cellar? Maybe she was farther away than she thought.

Through the ringing in her ears, she heard people shouting.

Suddenly, her head was out of the hole.

What’s...?

The cellar wasn’t dark, after all. It glowed with red, flickering light that came from the Kutch tunnel.

Just as she realized that the barred iron door stood wide open, someone dashed into the tunnel.

Eve?

Dana only caught a glimpse before the woman raced out of sight.

It has to be Eve, she told herself. A naked gal running off with a pistol in her hand. Who else
could
it be?

Besides, nobody else on the tour had a figure like that.

Had Clyde taken off through the tunnel?

She shined her flashlight around, looking for the white costume. Her beam showed people sprawled on the floor, others huddled together, a few hurrying this way and that.

No sign of Clyde.

As Dana crawled out of the hole, someone rushed at her from the left. She flung up an arm, expecting a blow. Her arm was grabbed. “The shit hit the fan,” Tuck said, pulling to help her up. “Clyde went nuts. He busted the light and started clawing everybody. It was fuckin pandemonium around here.”

On her feet, Dana said, “Where is he?”

“Took off through the Kutch tunnel. Eve went after him.”

“
You
okay?”

“Fine.”

Dana shined the light on her.

The left side of Tuck’s face looked red and swollen. A path the width of a large hand had been torn straight down the front of her uniform shirt from her left shoulder to her waist. Her bra was still intact, however. She didn’t seem to be scratched. The long flap of torn shirt hung almost to her knee.

“Clyde did that?” Dana asked.

“Sharp claws. It’s okay. He pretty much missed. Look, I need you.” Tuck squeezed her arm. “We keep some spare bulbs down here.”

“Let’s go get em.”

“I already did. Come on.” She led Dana over to a steamer trunk. Bending down, she lifted one end. “Just light my way.”

Dana raised her flashlight, swept it here and there, and found the dangling light fixture. “Here we go.”

Tuck dragged the trunk into position directly beneath the fixture, then climbed up.

Dana shined her flashlight on the jagged remains of the bulb. “Careful you don’t cut yourself.”

“Have you got a rag?” Tuck asked.

Dana plucked a handful of fabric out of the left front pocket of her shorts. Too late, she realized it was Warren’s underwear—her souvenir from last night in his car. She handed it to Tuck, anyway.

Holding the good bulb in her mouth, Tuck balled up the underwear. She held the fixture with one hand. With the other, she shoved the bunched briefs up against the sharp remains of the broken bulb.

As she twisted it, Professor Bixby stepped closer to watch.

The base came loose. Tuck tossed it away, handed the underwear down to Dana, then took the fresh bulb out of her mouth. Twisting it into the fixture, she said, “This is how many tour guides it takes to screw in a light bulb.”

Suddenly, the bulb flared to life, filling the cellar with light.

“Good show!” Bixby proclaimed.

Dana shut off her flashlight and looked around. She saw Phil dead on the dirt floor just behind the tunnel hole, his throat ripped open. No sign of his wife, Connie. No sign of Andy or Alison Lawrence, either. Eleanor was on her knees, stuffing her folded tennis sweater underneath the head of her husband, Biff. He’d been ripped down the chest. His knit shirt was shredded and bloody, but he was conscious.

Dennis and Arnold seemed to be missing.

Off to the right, Owen lay facedown, bare to the waist. Vein’s black leather jacket was spread on the floor underneath him. Darke, on her knees beside him, used both hands to press a cloth against his back—probably his own shirt. She held a red-handled pocket knife in her teeth.

A few feet away from them, Vein had Monica pinned to the floor. In black satin bra, leather short-shorts and boots, Vein sat on top of Monica like a punk Dracula groupie, pressing a knife to her throat.

“Vein?” Dana called. “What’s going on?”

“She stabbed Owen.”

“Who
stabbed him?”

“Monica.”

Darke met Dana’s eyes. Unable to talk because of the knife in her mouth, she nodded her head up and down.

“I did not,” Monica protested. “They’re lying bitches.
She
stabbed him. She was
jealous!”

“He’s hurt pretty badly,” Vein explained. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

Tuck jumped down from the trunk. “Whatever the hell Clyde did upstairs—other than locking us in—I’m damn sure he didn’t call for an ambulance or cops. If we can’t bust the door open, we’d better...”

Tuck’s voice stopped.

Heads turned.

From somewhere down the Kutch tunnel came a chain of gunfire. Muffled and far away, the shots crashed together so fast they almost sounded like heavy cloth or canvas being ripped down the middle.

“Holy shit,” Tuck said.

“What
is
that?” Dana asked.

Bixby, eyes wide behind his glasses, said, “Machine gun.”

“That can’t be good,” Tuck muttered.

The weapon went silent.

“Could
Eve’s
gun sound like that?” Dana asked.

Bixby shook his head. “If you mean the nude lady with the pistol, I’m afraid not.”

Tuck stared at the entrance to the Kutch tunnel. “Eve’ll be okay,” she said. “Nothing can stop her.”

Suddenly leaping away from her injured husband, Eleanor blurted, “We’ve gotta get out of here!” and raced up the stairs.

“Can’t get out that way,” Tuck called to her. “The door’s locked.”

“Maybe we should go see what happened with Eve,” Dana suggested.

“Where’d everybody else go?” Tuck asked.

“I don’t know.”

“They went chasing after Eve,” Bixby explained. “Oh, perhaps half a dozen of them. Including those teenagers.”

From the direction of the Kutch tunnel came a single, quick
bam!

A smile spread across Tuck’s face. “
That
was Eve’s gun,” she said.

They listened for more shots.

And heard a low grumbling noise that sounded very much like the growl of a vicious dog. But it didn’t seem to be coming from the Kutch tunnel.

It came from somewhere in the cellar.

Dana twisted around.

Out of the hole in the floor protruded a hairless, snouted head. It swung from side to side, pale blue eyes darting about.

Tuck yelled,
“SHIT!”.

This can’t be happening, Dana thought.
Clyde
was the beast.

Who’s THIS?

The shiny white mouth writhed as it bared its teeth.

And Dana knew this wasn’t anyone in a beast suit.

She felt herself shrivel inside.

This
had to be the creature that savaged Warren, that snatched Eve and ripped and fucked her and left her handcuffed in its lair—that devoured those other two poor people.

No. Eve’s beast was Clyde. It bad to be. The cigarette stink, the keys...

As if it were in no hurry at all, the creature began to climb out of the hole.

“What’s going on down there?” Eleanor called from the stairway.

“We’ve got a beast,” Tuck said. She sounded strangely calm.

‟I
say
,” Bixby muttered.

“A
what?
” asked Eleanor.

In a loud, firm voice, Tuck said, “Tine to scram, everyone! Go for the Kutch tunnel! Run like hell!”