The man in the hallway, the one who’d looked dead, turned out to be less than dead. He had regained consciousness with the sound of someone resurfacing after being underwater for too long. Dane couldn’t help it; he’d given a short girlish yelp, frightening Nikki, who gave him the dismissive, soul-crushing look of pity that only attractive women were able to bestow. That was before the man’s crumpled body had caught sight of them with his one functioning eye and begun crawling across the hallway toward them, growling and snapping with his broken mouth.
He had sustained a head injury. There was a carpenter nail pressing up against or through his brain, only rage and pain allowing him to move, and not well. His hands dangled by the flesh of his wrists, flopping as he pulled himself forward by his elbows.
The broken man was too loud. Dane could already hear curious hoots and hushes from both ends of the hallway, the cafeteria and the rec room. They needed to shut him up before that commando goon squad showed up again. Before Dane could think of something, Nikki walked into the hallway, exposing herself to whatever else was out there, and instead of using her scissors, she stomped a heel down into the thing’s temple, driving the nail deeper. The hit brought an abrupt stop to hi cries.
After their nap in the waiting room, Dane had sobered up and it had taken self-control not to dip back into his supply. He wanted to be sharp, wanted to help, he really did, but Nikki was just more man than he was.
Pressed up against the door, Dane fell backward as it was flung open behind him, Paulo’s chest colliding with the back of Dane’s head. The big man tensed and Dane hoped he wasn’t about to be pummeled, either by mistake or on purpose for getting in Paulo’s way.
“Let’s go,” Paulo said, already breaking into a run as he grabbed Nikki’s wrist. Dane wasn’t getting that special treatment, so he loped along after them. Dane gave the broken man wide berth even though it seemed impossible that he’d be capable of moving fast enough to grab him, if he was still alive.
Paulo had switched his pipe for a flashlight. It was a weapon with more heft than Dane wanted for himself, and he was secretly happy that it had gone to the biggest member of their group.
They ran in a small V formation, Dane veering closer to the middle of the hallway as they passed doorways. Nikki hadn’t thought to do this, so as they made a beeline for the stairwell, nobody seemed more surprised than she was when a hand popped out of the pharmacy and latched on to her hair.
Clemson had his hand out and then, like magic, she filled it. A similar thing had happened to him before, and he’d heard about cases of it happening to other guys. Or stories at least. Everyone needs stories to keep them warm as the night tries to kill them.
It was possible to head out into the field with one objective in mind and stumble into an absolute gift from God, a secondary objective that netted you all the right kind of notoriety. Sure, it was more likely to stumble into a trip wire and then a chest full of ball bearings, but happy accidents were the stories that got the most play back at camp.
Disassembling the barricade and having the girl run by at the exact time was one of those happy accidents.
Flying high over his victory in the pharmacy, Clemson shot his arm through the hole he’d cleared, got ahold of her hair, thanked his lucky stars, and gave a swift yank.
Nikki’s head rocked back, and there was no delay between the movement and the sharp pain that turned her vision white. There was a moment when she wasn’t sure if her scalp was still attached to her body, but then her feet found purchase and she couldn’t pull herself away from the door. If Nikki hadn’t broken Paulo’s grip as the fingers wrapped around her hair, she probably would have snapped her neck as the men pulled her in two directions. As it was, she was pulled off her feet toward the doorway, her cheek pressed flat against a jagged stretch of wood.
Paulo turned back to her, his face a mask of despair and surprise, which didn’t inspire confidence as to whatever unseen force was trying to pull her head through the small gap in the barricaded entryway. Knitting his bottom lip under his teeth, Paulo reached behind her and pulled, not her hair but the fist that had worked its way deep into it, fingernails digging up her hair follicles.
Paulo lifted his flashlight to beat at her attacker; she could hear the thud of his blows and hoped her head wasn’t going to be suddenly thrust into the path of the heavy steel tube. It was no use attempting to turn, the creature’s fingers were stitched in place and he wasn’t letting go of his quarry, so Nikki stared at the ceiling tiles and wished for the best.
Dr. Dane, whom she’d all but given up hope would ever do anything helpful—especially after he’d lost his shit in the hallway over a resident who was one light blow away from death—surprised her by pushing Paulo out of the way and setting upon the hand with his letter opener. The blade glinted red in the darkness as he slashed.
The doctor, who a moment ago had been simpering in fear, stabbed at the hand and arm, the opener coming back streaked with blood. There was one thrust where he came too close and she felt the flat of the opener pressing against her ear, opening a cut.
“Just cut my hair!” Nikki yelled, amazed that she had to be the first to think of this as Paulo and Dane struggled to get a grip on her and engaged in a tug-of-war to keep her on the right side of the barricade.
The doctor began to saw as Paulo readjusted his grip on her arms. When the tearing sound of her hair stopped but she still couldn’t move, screams began, indicating that Dane must have been slicing through the man’s fingertips. She pulled toward Dane, the last few hairs plucking free in the screaming man’s fist. Her scalp and neck throbbed but the sensation was nothing compared to the ecstasy of freedom, a restored range of motion.
Even after she was upright and ready to continue their run down the hallway, Dane kept slashing at the arm as it hurried to unblock the doorway, the hole in the debris widening now so they could see him, small and frenzied. The man had a different build from the rest of the residents they’d encountered, but it was no less threatening. And he was too loud, his stream of indecipherable threats and curses called the rest of Mercy House to attention, letting them know that there was fresh meat to hunt.
They were twenty paces from the stairs. There was no turning back now and nowhere to hide where they wouldn’t be followed.
“Come on!” Paulo shouted back to Dane, who stumbled away from the door as the resident’s fist clawed at his face; one of the man’s fingertips bobbed, connected to the rest of him by only a sliver of skin.
They all reached the landing at the same moment, Dane moving double time to catch up. Paulo put his head over the railing and looked up and down while Nikki watched the hallway behind them. There were residents watching them, standing halfway out of the cafeteria, but their body language was cautious, possibly frightened of the growling, screaming man clawing his way out of the pharmacy.
There was a crack and a two-by-two section of whiteboard hit the hallway floor. The man slithered out of the hole he’d made. It was a breech birth, his knees emerging first and then the rest of his body flopping out. Paulo pulled Nikki and she followed, tripping on the first step but getting a feel for the distance between the stairs on the fly, the three of them running toward the propped-open basement door.
Above them, she could hear the man breaking free of the doorway and stomping after them—there was only one set of footsteps, the sound muffled. Their pursuer was wearing socks. Dane tugged at the door, trying and failing to close it behind them. The door was not held by a magnetic or pneumatic hold but by a splintered wooden doorjamb that Nikki had to point out to the doctor. Paulo kicked it out of the way and the door pulled shut just as the man rounded the corner of the stairs, brandishing an oversize cleaver. Taking a running jump off the landing, he cleared ten or so steps only to have the door shut in his face.
Paulo kept his hand on the door pull as Dane let go with a sigh of relief. The basement around them was completely dark, its silence at odds with the banging and screaming in the stairwell.
“Get my key. We need to lock—” Paulo said. He was cut off as the struggle to keep the door closed began. Nikki dove on the handle to add her weight and began pulling. Even with the two of them holding it back, with Dane busy digging into Paulo’s pocket to grab his key ring, the door was opened a crack.
The space widened as the resident pulled, an inch, then two, then there was enough room for him to wedge the cleaver inside; it shimmered from the refracted light of the stairway emergency bulb.
“You two back up,” Paulo said, his muscles tensing, feeling around between his knees for where he’d pinched the flashlight. Nikki wasn’t quite sure what he was planning, but she let go and backed away from the door. If the last few hours had taught her anything, it was that this guy seemed to know what he was doing.
The keys dangling from crooked fingers, Dane pulled away, too.
“I get him in here and you lock it, okay?” Paulo said to the doctor.
There was no lip now from Dr. Dane, no druggie cries of You’re not the boss of me, only knit-brow attention. Dane nodded, the mass of keys looking dense in his hand, and Nikki hoped he’d be able to find the right one with no further instruction.
Paulo pushed out and opened the door, the sudden lack of resistance allowed the rest of the resident’s arm to glide in, and then Paulo pulled the door back shut on the man’s elbow. With the muscles and tendons of the forearm crimped, the weighted blade fell to the concrete with a twang.
The man disarmed, Paulo let go of the door completely. Red light flooded in and the gloom was cut through as Paulo turned on the flashlight. He had let him in on purpose so they could get the door closed. It was a gamble, but Nikki understood why he did it. The resident was dazed and bloody, and as he stormed into the basement, it was clear that Paulo had the height and reach advantage over him.
The beam from the flashlight swung around and Nikki was able to catch snatches of their surroundings. The basement of Mercy House was a world at odds with the antiseptic, modernized order of what she’d seen upstairs. Around them were disorganized piles—items that, from the looks of them, had been recently rifled through. The items stacked in the basement were layered by age, forming strips of sediment that chronicled not only the history of Mercy House but the last century of geriatric medicine.
Paulo stepped backward, dragging the cleaver along with his foot and kicking it under a pallet loaded up with cardboard boxes. Nikki found herself wishing he’d just picked it up, or at least scooted it over to her. Paulo moved farther into the basement and goaded the resident to follow him. The hunched man, his fists curled into tight claws, his left arm dripping blood on the floor, was a dime-store wolfman, with no fur to speak of besides his wispy gray sideburns. Disarmed and as injured as he was, Nikki had to give the fight to Paulo before the first blow was exchanged.
With the man lured into the room, the distance between the resident and Dane must have become comfortable enough for the doctor to jump into action. He closed the door, blocking out the red light, and began trying keys, keeping his eyes on the combatants, not the keyhole.
Nikki lost sight of the doctor’s efforts as Paulo swung the flashlight, pointing the beam up at the ceiling and away from the door, winding up for a crushing blow, a cartoon bop on the head that would flatten the resident if it connected.
There was a metallic ping as the head of the light bounced against the floor, the downward swing too big and too slow, leaving Paulo open to a counterattack that came from the resident’s nonmutilated arm. It was a backhand slap that would have put Paulo out cold had it been anything more than a glancing blow across his cheek. The spotlight returned to Dane, still trying to throw the lock on the other side of the brawl. Nikki gave the two fighters space and backed into a rack of old canes and walkers.
The clatter she’d caused didn’t distract either the resident or Paulo; the two had eyes only for each other. Switching from ineffectual but savage swipes to acrobatics, the resident took a diving kick at Paulo, who defied her expectations and thrust into instead of away from the kick.
Planting his shoulder below the man’s knee, Paulo took him to the floor.
“Got it!” Dane cried out, throwing the dead bolt on the basement door, as if his success dictated that everything was all good, that they could go home now.
Paulo swung the light, socking the resident in the mouth. Both Clemson’s legs were wrapped around Paulo now. Tackling him had not been the best idea, and Paulo’s size advantage evaporated as he limited his mobility, subjecting himself to the resident’s madness.
Someone who didn’t show that they felt pain was capable of doing anything to win a fight. Nikki was no fighter herself, but she had talked to enough sixteen-year-olds with neck and face tattoos to understand the philosophy behind showing your opponents, or prospective opponents, that you didn’t fear bodily harm, that you embraced it.
The resident had been favoring his uninjured hand, but that changed as their bodies became tangled on the floor. Paulo swung for the man’s face a second time. The resident tightened his legs in a wrestling hold, grabbed the flashlight with his good hand, and then went to work on Paulo’s wrist. Aside from the blood, a thick, oily layer of it coating his grip on the flashlight, the man used the joints of his exposed bones to cut into Paulo. Nikki gasped before Paulo did.
Pain or revulsion or a mix caused Paulo to drop the flashlight. Its bulb now coated in blood, it rolled away and the pink gel over the spotlight threw harsh shadows on the basement. The fighters’ silhouettes became shadow puppets on the junk piles and cinder block walls. The man redoubled his uninjured grip on Paulo’s arm and leaned back, the snap audible and the bones of Paulo’s forearms jutting against his skin. His arm hadn’t just been broken, it had been shattered.
“Help,” Paulo said, as if they were going to yell Cut on the fight, throw in their towels, and regroup for the next round.
Dane had his letter opener out, but even from across the room Nikki could see that his hand was shaking. She turned away from the fight, not to hide her eyes from the gruesome death that was surely coming but to find something to turn the tide.
The attack that had killed Don was unfair in its brevity. He’d stepped in front of a bus for her, but he couldn’t have known that he was doing it: He was getting between his wife and his mother, for fuck’s sake. Paulo had saved her at least three times now; there was no way she’d stand by and watch.
The canes and walkers were mostly light armaments, aluminum alloys built to be airy on purpose. She needed something with heft or an edge. She pushed the cart of walking implements out of the way and uncovered a stack of something older, relics of a bygone era.
Turning around, she lifted the bedpan but let it fall back against her breasts as she walked it over to the fight.
She was either that exhausted or it was that heavy.
Positioning herself so she could drop it on the man’s face hadn’t been difficult. He was so consumed in his bloodlust, intent on wrenching Paulo’s busted arm from the rest of his body, that he hadn’t looked up.
The porcelain bedpan didn’t break on the first hit. So instead she swung it, crashing it down on the man’s fontanel where it stopped short, braining him, and filling the basement with a hollow gong chime. The reverberations from the blow moved up Nikki’s arm. It was going to leave her sore, but the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. Her muscles burning, the man’s face presented itself to her as he looked up, his eyes unfocused. She lifted the bedpan above her head to get more momentum.
The edge of the bedpan cracked the second time, half of the antique falling away as she lifted it for round three. The final swing was the easiest, as the jagged piece of porcelain was only half the weight now.
She pointed the edge down, not meaning to connect with the man’s open mouth, but the target ended up a happy accident.
Like a guillotine, the broken edge of the bedpan sliced into the corners of the man’s mouth, cutting his lips into a grotesque smile as she pushed, the pan not stopping until the man’s head hit the ground, and then lodging so far into the back of his head that it would have been possible she’d hit spinal cord, and had definitely shorn off his uvula.
It was gruesome. Paulo rolled away from the body, screaming like someone who’d just lost his mind, but before she’d taken her hands off the weapon, before the death had become real, Nicolette Laurel was quite happy. Happy enough to laugh.