I wipe sweat.

– Feel like I’m gonna puke. Cramps. Hot flashes. Cold flashes.

I point at myself.

– Sure I’m the guy you want on point?

She jerks her gun at the hole.

– Jump on up there and stop whining, Joe. Doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong with you that most women don’t deal with once a month.

– Calling me a pussy?

She drops her aim till it’s on my legs.

– Need some motivation here, Joe?

I hold up my half a hand.

– Leave a little for the vultures, lady.

She tilts her chin at the hole.

– Show us how safe it is.

I rub my chin.

– Sure. Safe as houses. Nobody up there but the chickens. I jump.

Full fed, I’d just about be able to hop straight up and land straddling the hole. Like I am, I get as good a grip on the edge as I can with one thumb, and haul myself up and through.

Nothing kills me.

Light from below shows me the corpse of the thing I did in a couple hours ago. Seeing it twists my stomach in another direction. Looks like someone crossbred a cactus with a manatee and turned it inside out. Only worse.

Amanda. Crazy little girl. What the hell are you doing?

I can’t see much more, my eyes not cutting the dark all that well. But it does smell thick with Vyrus. Thicker than I remember. And might be Hurley was right about that gun powder. Did the girl and her boy have a piece? Did they maybe use it on Sela out in that stairwell?

Hell. She’d have killed them both. Might explain the extra Vyrus smell if she killed the boy. Especially if she tossed his body in here.

From below, Terry.

– You dead, Joe?

I stick my head in the hole, shade my eyes from the flashlight beam, look at Lydia and Terry, their guns trained on me.

– That a trick question?

Terry circles his finger at me.

I look over my shoulder at the basement, look back down.

– Let me finish checking it out. And throw me up a flashlight.

One of them tosses the light, I miss it and it sails up through the hole, hits the floor, goes dark and skitters away, a little tinkle of sound trailing it.

I use the light from below as best I can, crawl out of it, into dark, feeling the floor. Put my hand in something wet and knobby-soft, feels like a handful of warm pig fat. I pull my hand back and fingertips skim something on the ground and it makes that tinkle sound as I scatter it.

Broken glass from the flashlight.

Fucking thing better work.

The beams from below are still shooting up through the hole, dancing on the cobwebs overhead. Just ten feet away, but they do me no good. A cramp grabs my guts. Yank, yank, yank. I put my hands down, scatter more glass, hear more tinkles. Feel more warm wet under my knees, soaking through the cold wet clinging to my jeans.

Man, that thing I killed was full of blood.

Wait.

Warm wet.

How many hours ago did I kill that thing? Yeah. No. I put my hand down. Smell my hand. Vyrus. No. Doesn’t look good for Chubby’s little girl’s boyfriend.

My hand closes on the flashlight.

Fucking finally.

I turn it on. See my hand covered in blood and something green, streaks of pink running through it. See the thing I killed, close up this time. Only. Except wait. It looks more like an inside-out lobster mashed with a porcupine. Wait.

Look over my shoulder at the beams coming from the hole. Reorient myself to the basement. Flash the beam of my own light to the opposite wall. And there’s the thing I killed.

Cold.

Beam on the thing in front of me.

Warm.

Scuttle back on my heels.

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

Look down. Floor is covered in shell casings.

What are all those black lumps?

Raise the beam, run it over the far end of the basement near the door, pile of bodies, some in black coveralls and body armor, some in police uniforms, coveralls, tracksuits, blood in runnels, a mass under the pile, still twitching, looks like a ball of flesh whips.

I can see those doors I felt in the dark a few hours back. They go farther than I thought. A row of them. Six, seven maybe. Half of them open. The basement takes a turn, there could be more doors around the bend. It’s quiet, but I can smell that mystery stink, Vyrus gone wrong, slipping from each of those doors.

They quiet because there’s no uninfected blood for them to smell?

Fed and sleeping?

Dead?

I’d like to get that lucky. Once in my life, I’d like to get that lucky. But I’m not counting on it.

I stand, take a few steps toward the hole and something takes me from behind, wraps around my throat, pinning my arms, covering my eyes, my mouth. I’m dragged backward, picturing tentacles, flesh whips, some other madness from Amanda’s lab, the Vyrus stretched to a perverse conclusion.

– Quiet, Pitt.

A hand is taken from my eyes.

Not in the grips of a mutated land squid, simply pinned by another trio of enforcers.

Predo, his suit clinging to him where it’s been soaked in blood, a crust of something yellow-gray dried along his jawline, a crosshatch of wounds closing on his forehead.

He puts his mouth close to my ear.

– They will hear you.

I nod.

The hand is taken from my mouth.

I look around.

Predo, a couple of his commandos, another two dozen or so enforcers in various costumes, all jammed into the dead end of the basement, backs against the wall that faces another row of doors. Six. Three are open. Bits and pieces of enforcers are scattered and smeared about. Something that I hope is dead, skin the texture of third-degree burns, underside coated in limp cilia, a row of tiny limbs jutting from its back, lying outside one of the open doors.

From inside one of the open cells comes the sound of flesh ripping, bone breaking, tendons snapping, a giant chicken being dismembered. Grate of teeth on bone.

Predo opens and closes his hands and one of the enforcers gives him a snubbed assault rifle.

He puts his mouth to my ear again.

– She opened the doors when we were driven down here. It appears that not all of the bolts withdrew. It could be malfunction.

I hold up a finger.

– It’s not. She’s fucking with you.

He nods.

– My thought. Yes.

He points at the corner that leads to the central basement, the rest of the cells, the hole, the door.

– Power junction. Cut the lines before she can open any more.

I’m looking at that corner, right in the angle of it, up where the wall meets the ceiling, a tiny dot of red light.

Predo points at the open door that doesn’t have a dead monster in front of it, or a live one beyond it eating enforcer corpses.

– Not all of them are dangerous. Immobile, it seems.

I tap his ear, he puts it close.

– Or not awake yet.

He shows me the assault rifle.

– Do you still want one of these, Pitt?

I nod.

He nods.

The hands release me and he gives me the gun.

– Mind where you point it.

I point it down the basement to the corner.

– How many down there?

He shakes his head.

– In the midst of chaos, I am afraid I did not bother to count. Three. Perhaps.

I point at the open cells across from us.

– Plus one dining and one sleeping.

– It appears.

A cramp grabs me, shakes my innards back and forth, let’s go.

Predo whispers.

– Are you unwell?

– Starving. But I’ll live.

He smiles.

– I’d not have taken you for an optimist, Pitt.

– We have to get out of here.

He nods.

– That would seem wise. Have you any ideas?

I point down.

– Sewer.

A Klaxon sounds and several of the enforcers jerk their triggers, sending a volley of ricochets off the walls. A few of them scream without being struck by bullets. There’s the sudden thunk of a heavy bolt being sucked back by an electromagnet.