May snored on the couch. Avery was asleep on the floor, twitching in his dream. Tyler hoped it was a pleasant one. On the couch with May, lying the opposite way, was Florence. She, too, snored. Tyler was glad someone could get some sleep.
He tried, but it wasn’t easy going, knowing that there were ugly monsters just outside, waiting for him to doze off so they could come in and devour he and his friends. That kind of thing didn’t make for easy sleeping at all. Besides, whenever Tyler Stapleton slept, he dreamed of his mother and Nana, and in those dreams, they were always in pain, calling out his name, begging for mercy as some unholy monster killed them. He didn’t want to deal with that. And if it wasn’t Mom and Nana, it was Logan, Jane, Grease, and Brad at the Falls, as some mammoth stomped their little safe haven into rubble.
Dreams, Tyler thought. That’s all they are. Not real. Relax, buddy.
But relaxing was easier said than done.
When he was a child, he’d often dreamed of being a superhero. His favorite comic book character was, without a doubt, Batman. He loved how dark the character was, a creature of the shadows, fighting for the light. He loved the black suit, the black car, his sometimes black morality. When it wasn’t Batman, it was the Man With No Name from the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, a real man’s antihero.
Today, he had to keep reminding himself that there was no such thing as the Man With No Name, no such thing as Batman, no such thing as heroes. The most important part of life in these times was surviving, and Tyler meant to survive…no matter what.
He looked at May. Had he not heard her light snoring, he would’ve thought she was dead, a corpse lying in this graveyard of a mall. Focusing, he saw her nostrils flare with every breath, her lips slightly move, as if a tiny bug had skittered along her teeth.
In all his years, he had never felt such love for a human being. Of course, there had been the few women in college and graduate school; the occasional girl he’d met on a dating website and taken out to dinner or for drinks. But none of these girls ever had a chance at capturing Tyler Stapleton’s heart. Not like May had done.
Outside in the mall, he heard the monsters moving, and his anger flared. They were waiting, trying to get at the only thing left in this shitty world that he cared about, and that was not okay.
The problem was simple; however, the solution was not. Tyler was in no position to defend himself. The number of bullets the group had between them wasn’t even worth mentioning. The simple fact of the matter was that they were cornered, and there wasn’t much they could do.
No, Tyler, he thought. No. You have to think. You’re a smart son of a gun. You can get us out of this.
But could he?
That was the real question, the one that needed answering.
Yes. Yes, he could.
He knew where the armory was in relation to the suit store. There had to be a way he could get there unnoticed by the monsters. If he went alone, there would be no chance of him getting anyone else hurt. May would be safe with Avery and Florence. They would protect her, keep her company. Avery had a gun to protect the others with, and a flashlight. If Tyler took his gun and his light, they wouldn’t miss them, especially if he came back with better weapons and ammunition. So yes, May would be safe.
She was currently sleeping with the others, while he made his plans; why disturb her? The exhaustion had settled in, hitting them all like a tsunami wave. Tyler could see it in their eyes, the way the skin beneath them had taken on a bluish hue. He was tired, too. He was always tired.
Tyler looked down at May on the couch. She was on her side. Her lips, the same blue as the skin beneath her eyes, moved with phantom, dream words.
Tyler turned toward the racks and racks of suit coats. He picked the nearest one. It was maroon-colored with elbow pads; the price tag read four hundred and fifty dollars.
He laid the jacket over May and brushed her hair from her forehead. That’s one expensive blanket.
On the floor, Avery stirred and reached for the gun lying next to him. Tyler was prepared to give him the whole spiel when he woke up, how he had to protect them, how they were safer inside of the store while he went to the armory, yada-yada-yada, but Avery only rolled over on his side, keeping his eyes closed. Tyler didn’t have to explain himself.
From Avery’s jacket, he took the ring of keys. One of them was marked ‘armory’. He would certainly need that.
He went through the back door. He thought about what he’d found in the other storeroom: Ray, his blood drained away. And a man as big as he was must’ve had a lot of blood.
Thinking of this almost made Tyler turn around, but he shook his head and kept going. He had to. For May, for Avery, for Florence. And, of course, for Ray.
The back of the suit store was much different than at the sporting goods store. Firstly, it wasn’t too big; about a third the size of the store out front, which wasn’t big at all. And there were no shelves, only stacked boxes labeled sloppily in marker, with words he couldn’t read.
He shined the weak flashlight beam in every corner of the room, behind every box, in every nook and cranny.
He found nothing: no monsters. Not even a spider. That was good.
Shining the flashlight above him, he scanned the ceiling. Nothing there, either.
At the back of the room was another door leading to the network of tunnels used for loading and unloading. This door was chained and locked, like all the others in the mall, courtesy of Avery, but it wasn’t padlocked. It was locked with a combination lock. Besides, the tunnels were too open, too big. Who knew where they led? Anything could be lurking there. He needed something more…confined.
Flashlight beam back on the ceiling. In the far corner was a vent. It was big enough for Tyler to squeeze into, but it would be a tight fit.
He shook his head.
God, help me, he thought. Ever since he’d spent those two nights in the army tank back at Stone Park, he had become quite claustrophobic. The tank compared to the vents, though…that was like comparing a one-bedroom apartment to the Taj Mahal. He shuddered at the thought.
But if you don’t get a move on, you’ll die inside of a tacky suit store. Does that sound much better?
“No, not really.”
He dragged a few boxes over to the far wall beneath the vent, then he stepped up on them to examine the bolts. He took his knife from his pocket and unscrewed each one. By the time he was finished, sweat dripped from his brow, and his shoulders ached from holding his arms up for so long. The grate came off with a muted screech.
From the vent’s opening, the smell of dust and age wafted out. Lots of cobwebs, lots of dust, lots of shadows. But he saw no glowing eyes.
He took a deep breath. This proved to be a mistake, because he inhaled some dust particles and began coughing. Once he got control of himself, he put the flashlight in his mouth and dove in.
A scene from the movie Die Hard popped into his head as he crawled forward. Bruce Willis, his face bloodied and his clothes grimy, sliding around the vent, pulling his lighter out of his back pocket, lighting his way through the darkness. His line: ’Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.’ Tyler couldn’t agree more with that sentiment.
He was boxed in on all sides. If he’d had a lighter in his back pocket, he would’ve had a hard time reaching behind him to pull it out. There was no elbow room.
He slithered on. As he got deeper, the dust grew thicker and the metallic walls seemed to be closing in. One thing he had going for him was the sweat. It coated his arms, making it easier for him to slide forward. The less time he had to spend in here, the better.
Tyler judged he was out of the suit store, crawling somewhere along the walls of the main corridor. Up ahead, past a thick spider web—hopefully long-abandoned—the vent climbed upward.
You got this, Tyler. You got this.
One arm out in front of the other, he pulled himself up. His shoes squeaked against the metal as he pressed forward. The weight he put on his righ
t foot during one of these shifts caused the vent to buckle and pop loudly. In the dead quiet, the sound was like a gunshot.
Panic seized him like angry hands. A pain in his chest followed. He knew he was no young man, not anymore, and the thought of having a heart attack blared like a warning alarm in his mind. He very well could die in here. His heart could give out on him, and he would rot in the vents of Amsterdam Mall. The others would probably never find him… that was, if they made it out of the suit store without dying. Even if they did, they would most likely not stay here.
Control, his mind demanded. Control yourself, Tyler.
Deep breath. Another one. One more.
He reached, felt the edge of the chute, and pulled himself up. Sweat poured off of him, drops dribbling onto the metal as he lay unmoving, catching his breath.
Still alive. Heart’s beating. Good, good.
“Almost there, almost there.” His words were muffled by the flashlight in his mouth, which had grown increasingly slick with drool and sweat. “Almost. Keep going.”
In reality, he didn’t know if he was almost there or not. Inside of the tunnels, all semblance of time was gone. He might’ve been in here for hours. Might’ve been in here for minutes. All he knew for sure was that his muscles ached, his heart was beating too fast, and he thought if he didn’t die via heart attack, he would die via panic attack.
Either way, things weren’t looking good.
Of course, there was also the chance he’d run out of room. He’d get stuck. Or the vents would crumple and fall out from under him. He would be buried underneath the rubble, left to rot. He would die of starvation. He would die in pain.
“Shut up,” he mumbled.
The vent he was in now was larger than the one before. He rolled over onto his side and looked down the way he’d come. Looked forward, too.
Saw nothing but dark—
Fear froze his muscles for a long moment. Up ahead, in the distance, were shadows…and there was something in the shadows.
Eyes. Two glowing, red eyes, like the dying embers of a campfire. Rats? he hoped.
They were gone now.
He raised the flashlight and shined the faltering beam up ahead. He almost didn’t want to, was almost afraid of what he might see.
But he saw nothing. No eyes; just shadows that quickly bled away from the light.
It’s all in your head, Tyler. Keep going.
Despite his fear, he forced himself forward, army crawling, his flesh slipping against the metal. He found he was able to move faster than before. Partly spurred on by the phantom eyes he’d seen in the dark, partly by just being sick of that perpetual feeling of claustrophobia and dread, but mostly by the thought of May. He wanted to get her to safety. She had accompanied him all these miles from Ohio, had seen some messed up things along the way, had had his back no matter what. He owed her that much. He owed—
A sound came from the same area where Tyler had seen the eyes, and he was closer to it now than he had been before. The sound that had reached his ears was a slight bang, like when he’d planted his foot to climb up this branching vent, only lighter.
He would’ve thought that this, too, was his imagination, had he not felt the vent vibrate with the weight of…something.
He exchanged the flashlight for his gun, setting the light in front of him, shining it toward the area he thought he’d seen the eyes. Then he picked the flashlight back up and aimed the gun.
Another bang, this one louder than before.
“Shit,” Tyler said. “Major shit.”
A flash of a clawed hand came around the corner of the junction.
Tyler’s finger rested on the trigger, twitching. He was ready to fire. Doing so in here would prove detrimental to his hearing, but that was better than dying or getting turned into one of those things.
The claw came out again. It was long, scaly, and black. There were only three digits, each one ending in a curled spike. The spikes raked across the vent, making a terrible screeeeeeech.
Then came another claw.
Tyler was frozen, rooted to the spot. His heart beat so fast, he thought it was going to come out of his chest.
Then the creature’s snout came into view. It, too, was elongated and scaly. It reminded him of a crocodile’s.
Tyler pulled the trigger of the gun, almost involuntarily.
The explosion was mammoth. A flash of bright light, the scorching heat from the barrel, the echo of eardrum-shattering proportions.
The creature cried out, but it did not die. Instead, the bullet seemed to act like a bee sting, angering it more than hurting it.
Its large body turned the corner as Tyler began frantically sliding backward toward the rectangle he had emerged from. Going back proved more difficult than going forward. His pants kept snagging on bolts and jagged pieces of metal. One such piece cut through the fabric of his jeans and into his skin. The pain was immediate and immense, but he forced himself to put it to the back of his mind. He kept reminding himself that a cut was nothing compared to death.
This beast was different than the one he’d seen in the stockroom of the sporting goods store, the one that had been feeding off Ray, which meant that more monsters had definitely gotten in.
Tyler’s foot caught on the edge of the rectangular exit. It was only then that he realized he had forgotten the flashlight, but that didn’t matter, not anymore. He would find his way by touch.
The light currently sat a few paces in front of him, the beam jumping madly from the combined forces of Tyler’s and the monster’s mad scrambling.
Then it went out completely, as the beast’s body swallowed it up. The vent was once again dark, but Tyler could still make out the bumpy body of the monster before him, its scales, its ridges, its glowing, red eyes, and its teeth.
So many teeth. Too many for its long jaws to hold all at once.
He didn’t need the light to catch its stench, though—the predatory musk oozing from its skin.
It let out a roar that rivaled the gunshot.
Tyler’s left leg went down the rectangle, followed by his right. He couldn’t see, so he was acting on pure instinct. He shoved madly backward, hitting his spine on the edge hard enough to make him cry out. There was no pushing this pain to the back of his mind. For a second, he thought he might’ve momentarily paralyzed himself.
The monster’s jaws opened and snapped shut, the putrid stink of rotten meat escaping from within. The warm air of its breath blew across Tyler’s face. He gagged and cried out again, and then—
Weightlessness. Only for a moment, as he fell through the hole and slid out in a crumpled ball, coming to rest in the tight vent below the one he’d just come from.
His head pounded. Something warm and sticky ran down from his cheek. Blood.
But it was not over.
Looking above him, he saw the snout of the creature. It wasn’t giving up, not yet.
The vent peeled away as the monster came at him like a starving, rabid animal, gnashing its teeth together.
The entirety of the vent started shaking.
Those three-fingered claws squeezed around the edges, peeling, peeling, ripping.
In his flight, Tyler had lost the gun; now he could only watch helplessly as the creature barreled down upon him.
24
What a Trip
The monster didn’t land on Tyler, because Tyler fell.
The ventilation system let out a huge groan of breaking bolts, and the metal beneath Tyler disappeared. He felt that feeling of weightlessness again, and it felt like he fell forever before he came to a crashing halt on the mall floor. He hit it so hard that, for the moment, he thought he had died, or at least ruptured some vital organs and broken his spine.
The air was thick with dust; he couldn’t see.
Gotta move, Tyler. Gotta get going, he thought, and even thinking caused him slight pain.
He tried moving, rolling over amid the destruction, the twisted metal, the dust and pie
ces of plaster ceiling that he’d fallen through, but it was no easy task.
That was when he heard the monster above him. His eyes shot open and scanned above. Too dark to see much of anything—
Except for the glowing coals of the creature’s eyes, bobbing around the new hole in the ventilation system.
Shit. Not good.
Spurred on by sheer adrenaline, he rolled over onto his side. The pain had subsided slightly—either that, or the adrenaline was masking it. He got onto his knees, then into a crouch. As he stood up, his bones crackled like popping logs in a fire.
Guess my basketball playing days are over, for a while at least, he thought.
Before him was the corridor he needed to be in. Down the way, in a janitor’s storage closet, was Amsterdam Mall’s armory. It would be bolted and chained shut, but—
The key! Tyler’s mind screamed as he hobbled away.
He patted his pants pocket, felt the shape of the keys he’d taken out of Avery’s jacket before leaving the suit store. The keyring still there and, he noticed, almost embedded into his flesh. Oh well, better than losing it.
The storage closet was about a hundred feet away now.
Behind him, he heard the click-clack of the creature’s claws hitting the mall floor. It sounded like it was limping, like it had been hurt in its descent or in its pursuit of Tyler. That didn’t mean much, though. The creature would undoubtedly be faster than a beat-up Tyler would be. Still, Tyler moved as quick as he could.
The creature roared.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
He wouldn’t.
Up ahead, he could see the glimmering chain through the storage closet’s handles, like a beacon of light, guiding him home. He moved faster.
So did the click-clacking of the long nails behind him.
Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4) Page 13