Chapter Thirty-five

Jack used Hans's key ring and he and Oscar passed through two steel doors. He'd half expected to see a mob of people, but what faced them was a darkened room.

Oscar reached out, fumbled with the light switch, and flicked it on.

And heard a bone-chilling, high-pitched chatter and screams he could never have imagined. It was like being in a pit where everyone was yelling at once but not in English. In fact, he realized, not in any human language at all.

He and Oscar looked around and saw them. Hundreds of animals: baby chimpanzees, dogs of all sizes, pigs—huge, ugly, spotted pigs—mice, and rabbits, most of them trussed up in ways beyond imagining. It was like something out of Bosch, Jack thought, but worse, far worse. For all his horror, Bosch was only painting images from his twisted mind.

These nightmares were real.

Rabbits with steel bolts shoved through their heads, dogs with horrible, bloody scabs on their backs where their fur should have been. Pigs covered in running sores and screaming monstrous, agonized squeals.

“Madre de Dios,” Oscar said.

Then, as they walked down past the endless row of cages, they saw trays with dead animals on them.

But not whole dead animals. More like pieces of dead animals: guts and ears and noses and piles of intestines.

And the smell of the place! At first Jack hadn't noticed how foul the odor was. He'd been so surprised by the hideous visual tableau and maniacal sound level that the smell hadn't quite reached down and strangled him. But it did now. The smell of suffering beyond belief. The smell of rotting corpses and chemicals. There were no words to describe it. A sweet, foul smell that made both men dizzy and nauseous.

“We should let them all out, compadre. Let them be free.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “But God knows what they would do to us if they got loose.”

“You think an animal wants to take revenge?”

They stared at baboons with electrified caps on their heads looking out of their cages at them with what seemed to be a fury that knew no end.

And the screaming pigs—the ones with their guts exposed from monstrous operations. The pigs with the red eyes glowering at them. Wild javelina pigs, each with some kind of hole in its back into which a green liquid dripped steadily from a catheter.

“We let these animals out,” Jack said, “and they are going to make short work of us.”

“I wouldn't blame them,” Oscar said.

They wandered down the rows of terrifying half-destroyed animals, Jack feeling a terrible rage that anyone could do this to such helpless beasts. They reached another door. It was steel, and locked, but Jack found the right key on Hans's chain and swiftly opened it.

The new room was lit in purple neon.

And it was cold, ice cold. The freezer.

Oscar's teeth chattered and he felt faint.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Where they make ice cream?” Jack asked.

They moved forward slowly, shivering.

Then they both saw it at once. The frozen body of a black woman with her stomach carved away. Two bolts that looked like the same bolts that were in the rabbits’ heads, but jumbo-sized, went right through Gerri's head.

“Like a black female Frankenstein,” Jack said.

Gerri, or what was left of her, was hanging from a hook in the wall. Her eyes were gone and her mouth lolled open, an old door with broken hinges.

Though frozen solid, she seemed to be still screaming.

“Oh, man,” Jack said, somehow moving down the rows of other bodies that hung from the wall. People with eyes pulled out, arms missing, lung cavities exposed.

And then, at the other end of the hall, they heard voices. Crowd murmurings. And mad, wild music, some kind of high, weird, techno shit played by a maniac on goat speed.

Before they got to the door, Jack saw a big metal freezer trunk.

He toyed with the clasp and though he didn't know how he did it, the latch clicked. As Oscar looked over his shoulder, Jack slowly lifted the lid and looked inside.

Inside, there was a familiar boy, or what was left of him. He had a bullet hole in his arm, and another in his head. His lifeless eyes were open and staring up at Jack. His face was icy blue and his mouth was open as if he'd died in disbelief. His skin looked like old crêpe.

“Tommy,” Jack said.

“Madness,” Oscar said.

But there was no time to grieve.

Just beyond the next door they heard the noise grow louder. Above the insane music and the mad laughter, they heard something completely distinct. People who weren't laughing and chatting away. No, these people were screaming.

“What are you doing to us?”

“Whyyyy?”

“Pleeeease! This must be a mistake. God . . .”

And then another voice. A deep, amused voice.

“Sorry, this is no mistake,” a man's voice said. “You and everyone else who came to the cave were chosen for an excellent reason.”

There was a brief silence and then Jack and Oscar could hear a high-pitched crying, like a bird that's having its feathers torn out, one by one.

And words, too . . .

“Oooh, God, no no no no no no . . . somebody help us. Please, God, somebody help us.”

Jack looked at Oscar as they moved toward the last door.