The Slice

by Greg Taylor

  “Okay, let’s see what we got,” Strobe said, tossing the cutter to the concrete floor.

  “Probably just a bunch of old hospital equipment.”

  “Which we might be able to use, dude.”

  When Strobe pulled the heavy door open, the creaking of the rusty hinges sounded exactly like a haunted house door. Toby and Strobe looked at each other and smiled. The squeaking door was perfect, an apt punctuation point to four hours of working in Shock Corridor. But it turned out to be just a warm-up for what was inside the room.

  When Strobe and Toby scanned the dark area with their flashlights, they laughed at what they saw. The group that had staged the yearly Halloween attraction had left behind some of their props and mannequins.

  “I can’t believe they didn’t take this.”

  “Me neither.” Strobe moved farther into the room, examining the contents. “Then again, this stuff is total crap.”

  Taking a different path around the room than Strobe, Toby saw that Strobe was right. The Dracula, Frankenstein, and zombie mannequins had seen much better days. Or Halloweens. So had the assortment of grave markers, skeletons, and felt-stuffed bats.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, though. All this is pretty irresistible, don’t you think?”

  Strobe nodded as he shone his flashlight around the room. “We just might be able to find a place for it.”

  Toby and Strobe looked at each other, then smacked a high five. They might very well be facing a life-and-death situation within the next twenty-four hours, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a little fun in the meantime.

  5

  At midnight, Strobe took Toby home, then returned to the hospital.

  At two in the morning, Strobe was still up, working on one of the traps in the hospital’s former cafeteria. He had already set off the thing numerous times. Just the same, Strobe felt compelled to trigger the trap one more time. After the hair-raising misfire of his crossbow up in the dekayi village, Strobe was determined there would be no misfires in this battle.

  After a final run-through on the cafeteria trap, Strobe finally dragged himself down to the basement to catch a few hours of sleep. He would have liked to have started right in on the next monster snare, but knew he needed to shut down his brain, at least for a little while. So Strobe set his watch for five A.M. and lay down on the concrete floor, using his backpack for a pillow.

  Strobe didn’t mind the harsh conditions of his sleeping quarters. After his wildly dangerous and over-the-top misadventures on the road, he was home. That’s all that really mattered right now. And Strobe couldn’t deny how good it felt, being reunited with his team.

  Strobe had sensed that Toby and Annabel felt the same way when they met earlier in the evening, in KP’s underground training center. Nobody had said anything about what they were feeling. They didn’t really need to. It was just there, the comfortable vibes bouncing back and forth between them when they had entered the classroom and taken their seats.

  So as Strobe drifted off to sleep, that’s what he was thinking about. Not the impending battle with the dekayi. Not the next trap he was going to construct. But how good it felt to be back in a place that he was more and more beginning to think of as a home.

  Which made Strobe suddenly think of Calanthe. For the first time in her life, that’s what she must be feeling. That she was in a place she could actually call home. That she had friends.

  That she wasn’t an orphan, any longer.

  * * *

  Toby was wide awake. He had tried to get to sleep earlier, but there was too much on his mind. So he had gotten out his Monsters of the World textbook, which he was now scanning with his flashlight. He was looking for anything that might be helpful in the upcoming “Monster Mash-up” with the dekayi. Tomorrow night. Halloween night. Definitely a different kind of trick or treat.

  Thumbing through the “Attacks and Counterattacks” section, Toby discovered that he knew most of this stuff already. Still, it was good to brush up on the key points presented in pages 103 to 157. It was like studying for a test. Only this test promised to be a little more intense than the classroom kind. Toby wouldn’t be getting a grade for it, either, of course. This was the pass-or-fail kind.

  Pass … you live.

  Fail … you die.

  Now that was a test worth studying for.

  * * *

  At the Oshiro household, all lights were out, including Annabel’s bed table lamp. Like Toby, Annabel initially had trouble falling asleep. But sleep had finally come for her.

  Just down the hall from Annabel, Calanthe was sitting in a chair by her bedroom window, staring outside. Calanthe knew there would be no sleep for her tonight. Ever since the Altering, she’d been so pumped up that she didn’t know what to do with all the energy.

  For now, she was putting it into worrying. Not the most constructive way to use her newfound zest, but Calanthe couldn’t help it. Strobe had been right, when he thought about what Calanthe must be feeling about her new home in Hidden Hills. Since her arrival in the suburban community, only a few weeks before, Calanthe had come to treasure so much. And now she was afraid of losing it.

  Staring outside, Calanthe watched the wind whipping through the trees. She was seeing the trees, their silhouettes dancing in the dark, but not really seeing them. They were just background to what Calanthe was actually doing, which was picturing everything she had experienced so far in her new world. Going through the moments, over and over, like a visual mantra.

  Calanthe wanted to imprint her Hidden Hills memories in her mind. That way, if the impending Day of Days was her last day, she would be able take everything with her. Her strange new customs. The vivid intensity of Triple H. The slang. And Annabel, Toby, and Strobe, of course. The memory of them Calanthe would hold closest.

  What Calanthe didn’t realize—as she sat in her chair, going through all this in her mind—was that she really wasn’t all that different from a typical teenager. The way she was feeling right now her fears, her longing to belong, the intensity of her feelings—made her very much like the young people she had felt so distanced from just a week earlier.

  Please let me survive tomorrow night! Calanthe suddenly thought.

  Outside, the trees continued to sway back and forth in the night wind. Something suddenly flew past the window. A nearby streetlamp blinked a couple of times, then went out.

  And that’s when Calanthe felt it.

  6

  “Annabel … Annabel!”

  Annabel woke with a start. She blinked as she looked around her room. The digital clock read 3:35. Calanthe was standing over her, hand still on her arm where she had shaken her awake.

  “Calanthe?” Annabel replied groggily.

  “They’re here!” Calanthe whispered.

  Annabel immediately threw off her covers, jumped out of bed, and started for her closet. She stopped before getting there and looked back at Calanthe. “Wait … what?”

  “They’re here. They have arrived!”

  “But you said…”

  “I know. I misjudged when they would come for me.”

  Annabel didn’t ask any more questions about Calanthe’s miscalculation on the dekayi’s arrival time in Hidden Hills. There wasn’t any time. Fortunately, the two had already gone over what they would do when the dekayi arrived. So they were able to snap into concentrated action as soon as Annabel had called Strobe to tell him to come get them.

  They dressed quickly in their black jeans, T-shirts, and black hooded sweatshirts—their official “battle attire”—then tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor. After making their way silently to the kitchen, they snuck out the back door, then waited in the shadows of the side yard for Strobe to arrive.

  * * *

  As soon as Annabel and Calanthe hopped into the backseat of the battered Ford pickup Strobe had borrowed from his unknown contact, Strobe gunned it down the quiet street. He had picked up Toby before heading over to the Oshiro house.
r />   “Take it easy, Strobe,” Annabel urged. “You don’t want to wake up the entire neighborhood.”

  “The sooner we get back to Shock Corridor, the better. Do you know where they are, Calanthe? Can you pick that up with your super-antennae?”

  “No.”

  “We won’t even get to the hospital if you’re pulled over by the police,” Annabel pointed out. “A fifteen year old? Driving without a license?”

  “Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes to defeat the forces of evil,” Strobe countered. But he did let up a bit on the gas pedal. “So, you were a tad off on when these dudes were gonna show up, huh, Calanthe?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that.” Calanthe sounded genuinely contrite.

  “Actually, you weren’t really off,” Toby said. “You said they were coming on Halloween. And that they’d come at night. Well, Halloween began at midnight, and it’s definitely night out there. We just assumed it would be the night part of Halloween when everyone was out trick-or-treating and partying and getting into trouble.”

  “Good point,” Annabel said.

  Twenty minutes later, Strobe turned off Streets Run and gunned it up a steep two-lane road that was boxed in on both sides by tall, bare-limbed trees. They hadn’t gone very far when, from the backseat, Calanthe suddenly said …

  “They’re here.”

  Everyone looked at Calanthe. She was staring intently through the front windshield, her body tense.

  “Where?” Strobe asked.

  “Nearby.”

  “How nearby?”

  “Close enough so that it will be a race to the hospital.”

  Strobe was no longer easing up on the pedal. “Okay, listen up, everyone. As soon as we get there, immediately head to your positions. Calanthe, you to the basement—”

  “I do not wish to go to the basement,” Calanthe interrupted. “I want to be with all of you, fighting with you. This is what I have decided.”

  “No, Calanthe,” Annabel said. “Toby and Strobe and I have a little experience with this type of thing. The fighting, I mean. You don’t. Above all else, we want to protect you. Not put you in more danger.”

  “I fought the rukh in the lake,” Calanthe reminded everyone.

  “Yeah, and you were in a coma for more than a week after that,” Strobe pointed out. “The best way you can help us is by going to the basement. That way they’ll have to pass the traps we’ve set in order to get to you. See?”

  Calanthe nodded, reluctantly.

  Everyone’s eyes were now on the woods surrounding the car, watching for any movement.

  “One last thing before we get to the hospital,” Annabel said. “I did some research on snakes.”

  “Research on snakes,” Strobe said with a frown.

  “I thought it might be useful. Seeing as we have no idea what the dekayi’s weaknesses are.”

  “What’d you find out?” Toby asked. “Better make it snappy.”

  “We’re assuming we have to hit a dekayi’s heart in order to kill it, right?”

  “Right,” Strobe agreed.

  “Okay, well, a snake’s heart is located just before the bronchi, which is about a sixth of the way down their body from the head.”

  “That barely gives us even a general idea where it is,” Strobe said.

  “Well, it’s something, anyway. But get this. A snake’s heart is able to move around.”

  “Move around?” Toby replied.

  “Yes. Snakes don’t have a diaphragm, which is why their heart is able to do that. That doesn’t mean the dekayi have the same capability. But I’m thinking they might. Which means we’re either going to have to get lucky or find another way to stop them other than a direct hit to the heart.”

  “Good thing we have the traps,” Toby said.

  “Just remember the dekayi can paralyze you with their black, jelly-like spit,” Strobe said. “I know we’ve prepared for that, but always beware of that neat little trick.”

  Just then Strobe drove over a rise in the road, and the hulking silhouette of the abandoned hospital came into view. The group reflexively sat up straighter in their seats and stared at the forlorn-looking two-story structure, which was completely surrounded by a high chain-link fence.

  Overhead, an almost full moon was playing peek-a-boo with the dark clouds that scudded across a black sky. Glancing up at the moon, Toby didn’t think he would have been surprised if a witch had suddenly appeared from behind one of the clouds and streaked across the heavens on her broomstick. The night definitely had that kind of black-magic feel to it.

  Strobe was really pushing the old Ford at this point. Its engine whined in protest as the chain-link fence loomed closer and closer. Suddenly …

  BAMMMMM!!!

  Startled screams. Screeching tires. Strobe yanked on the steering wheel in an attempt to get the spinning truck under control. The truck did a spectacular 360, threatened to tip over, then skidded to a stop at the side of the road.

  “What was that?” Strobe asked, scanning the area to see what they had just collided with.

  “The rukh,” Calanthe said.

  Dazed from the impact, Toby was holding the side of his head, where it had slammed up against the window. He squinted to see through the rear window. Sure enough, there were the creature’s huge footprints, smashing heavily into view in the dirt at the side of the road and coming right for them.

  “Go, Strobe!” Annabel yelled.

  Strobe was already flooring it. There was a high-pitched whine from under the truck. The tires, struggling to get traction. When they did, the truck leaped forward.

  There was no time to stop and open the gate. So Strobe barreled right into it and blasted it off its hinges. Flying upward, the bottom metal tubing of the gate was snagged by the front grill of the truck.

  CRASSSHHHHH!!!

  Swinging heavily down onto the hood, the gate smashed into the windshield, cracking it. Strobe now had a distorted broken-glass/chain-link view of the hospital as he sped toward it over the uneven road.

  “We lose it?” Strobe shouted, trying to be heard over the loud clattering of the gate as it bounced up and down on the hood.

  “Can’t tell!” Annabel called back.

  “Just go, man!” Toby urged.

  When he was almost to the hospital, Strobe spun the steering wheel. Raced past the front entrance. Headed for the side of the building. Fishtailing around the corner, Strobe gunned it past a long row of busted-out, boarded-over windows.

  Arriving at the back of the hospital, the group leaped out of the truck before it had even come to a complete stop. They took a quick look at the huge imprint of the rukh’s shoulder at the back of the truck as they ran toward a rear double-door entrance that was boarded over with plywood. Over the door was a faded sign.

  EMERGENCY

  7

  Coming around a corner in the hallway, Annabel—who was leading the group—suddenly froze in place. There, standing behind what had once been the nurses’ station, was a very tall man! Annabel quickly leveled her crossbow at the figure.

  “No, Annabel! It’s okay.”

  Strobe pulled Annabel’s weapon down before she got off a shot. Confused at Strobe’s interference, Annabel approached the man and saw that it was …

  Dracula?

  Annabel’s angry expression showed exactly how she felt about Toby and Strobe planting the vampire king in the main wing of the hospital. “What is wrong with you two?” she hissed. “That is so incredibly juvenile!”

  “Sorry, we forgot to warn you.” Toby offered Annabel a contrite look. “We didn’t do it just for fun, though. We put Drac here as a possible distraction. The Wolfman is over in the—”

  “Stifle it!” Strobe frowned, listening hard for a repeat of the sound.

  “What is it?” Annabel whispered.

  Nothing but an eerie silence hung in the dark hospital corridors. The calm before the battle.

  “Let’s get to our places,” Strobe ordered.
“Now.”

  The quartet headed off in different directions, fanning across the lobby in front of the nurses’ station.

  “Hey. Everyone?” Toby had stopped at the entrance to a nearby hallway. The rest of the group looked back at him. “Good luck.”

  Staring across the dark lobby at his friends, considering what they were all about to do, and why they were doing it, Toby felt an intense connection to Annabel, Strobe, and Calanthe. But then a chill swept through him. Before he could banish the thought, there it was, front and center.

  Would they ever see each other again?

  Yes, Toby immediately decided. They would. They had to.

  * * *

  Strobe had the lookout position, at the front of the hospital, in a former patient room on the second floor. The window in the room—smashed long ago, with just the jagged glass edges remaining—was boarded over. Earlier, however, while scoping out the place, Strobe had pulled away part of the covering to be able to see outside.

  He had just hunkered down by the window when he saw them. Two men, walking slowly toward the hospital. Strobe’s pulse leaped at the sight of the duo. One was definitely the Tall Man. The other, Strobe couldn’t make out his features.

  “How’d you two manage to track me to Hidden Hills?” Strobe asked with a frown.

  Actually, it had been the rukh. The Tall Man had hit a dead end in Pittsburgh, which is where he had discovered that Strobe was no longer on the train. Even though the creature was more than a hundred miles away at the time—as it crashed through the woods north of Pittsburgh—it had been able to sense its master. After a necessary detour to the Pittsburgh train station, the rukh had then led the Tall Man and his battle companion to Hidden Hills. Divine intervention, this chance meeting between demon and master, is how the Tall Man interpreted it.

  Strobe found his infrared binoculars in his backpack and trained them on the two figures. Pulling them into focus, Strobe was startled to see that the Tall Man’s companion was a woman, not a man. With her heavily tattooed face, blank but fierce expression, and overly muscular body, she looked like a warrior from an ancient time. She looked even more sinister and deadly than the Tall Man.