Child’s Play 2

by Matthew J. Costello

  “Get up!” Kyle yelled at him, pulling his hand.

  She led him straight ahead, straight toward the noise, to the machine.

  Then Andy saw it. Kyle stopped to look at it, study it.

  There was a big conveyor belt entering from a gap in the wall. It was completely covered with a fence, creating a tunnel effect. Good Guy boxes moved down the belt and tumbled into a giant bin.

  The fence keeps the boxes from falling off, Andy saw.

  The boxes of Good Guy dolls were dumped in a great pile at the other end.

  It doesn’t seem as if they need any more Good Guys, he thought. Don’t they already have enough?

  He heard something from behind. Little steps. He turned and tugged at Kyle’s hand.

  “I know,” she said. “This way!” She pulled him to the open end of the belt, where the boxes tumbled out. There were steps there, and a platform.

  Andy knew what Kyle wanted to do.

  Kyle climbed the steps, pulling Andy up with her. He held her hand tightly.

  I know what she wants to do, he thought. But I don’t know if I can do it.

  The belt was moving fast, dotted with Good Guy boxes. The wire tunnel sealed it in. There was just this opening . . . and another one, somewhere at the other end, in another building, through a wall.

  In another building. Where the Good Guys are made.

  Andy heard more footsteps. When he turned and looked back, he saw a shadow moving down the alleyway, Chucky’s shadow, holding the knife up high.

  Kyle took his chin in her hands. “Think you can do it?” she asked.

  Andy looked at the belt rolling toward them. He knew what she wanted to do.

  He nodded.

  “Good boy,” she said. “I’ll go first. You just follow me . . . and do what I do.”

  Kyle jumped onto the belt and started walking. For a second she didn’t seem to go anywhere, but then she took more steps. And she grabbed at the mesh of the tunnel, pulling herself forward. When a Good Guy box came along, she stepped over it.

  “Come on, Andy. Come . . . on.”

  I’m not as big as Kyle, he thought. I can’t take such big steps. I can’t go as fast.

  “Come on!”

  Andy stepped onto the belt and immediately felt himself being whisked backward into the big dumpster filled with dolls. But he grabbed at the fence to try and hold himself in place. Then he ran.

  When he got just a little bit ahead, he let go of the mesh and ran a few more feet.

  Kyle turned to look at the front of the belt, at the hole leading into a different building.

  Andy hurried to catch up with her.

  But—at the same time—he turned to look backward.

  He saw Chucky climbing up to the platform, up to the open end of the conveyor belt.

  Andy didn’t see the next Good Guy box in his path.

  He tripped on it, and then he was flat on the belt, speeding backward.

  Back to Chucky.

  27

  Andy felt himself tumbling backward to the dumpster filled with brand new Good Guys.

  Back to Chucky.

  Kyle stopped at the opposite end of the conveyor belt, at the opening to the other building. She turned and yelled at him.

  “Andy, get up! He’s behind you! Please, get . . . up!”

  Andy dug at the rubber ribs of the belt, as he also turned around and saw Chucky crawling behind him.

  Andy watched Chucky grab at the mesh while he jabbed his knife into the belt, pulling himself along.

  “An-dy!” Kyle screamed.

  Andy turned, scrambling along the belt. He ran into one box, climbed over it, and then ran into another. And another. It was like a video game, like Super Mario jumping over mushrooms, climbing up walls.

  “Andy!” Kyle kept yelling.

  And then, from behind him, Andy heard the same word. “Andy.”

  I can’t look back at him, Andy thought. If I look back at him, he’ll get me. He saw Kyle leaning into the hole, reaching out for him. If I can just get to her hand, she’ll pull me out.

  Now he heard the thud as Chucky’s blade dug into the belt. He’s right behind me, Andy knew. He’s right at my feet, my ankles. He’ll grab me any second.

  Andy felt the tips of Kyle’s fingers. Then Kyle grunted and reached in. Her hand closed around his wrist. Another grunt, and she pulled him through the opening.

  Into another place. The place where they make the dolls. No. He looked around the room. No, this is the place where the machines make the dolls.

  They stood on another platform, and Andy had a few seconds to look at the conveyor belt as it wound its way through the factory, past all these strange machines. He saw headless Good Guy bodies and a machine that stuck heads on them and then another machine, like a big dentist’s drill, that stuck eyes into the head.

  He turned to Kyle, who was looking back into the hole, looking at Chucky.

  She looked up. Just over the hole. Andy saw metal grating. Kyle reached up and slid it down, covering the open hole that led to the warehouse.

  Just as Chucky got there, grinning at them.

  Go. Away, Andy thought. Go away. And leave me alone.

  Kyle hung her whole weight on the grating, and it slammed down, right on Chucky’s hand. Andy watched Chucky’s hand get trapped between the grating and the metal wall. Kyle snapped a lock shut on the grating’s latch. While Chucky screamed. Andy saw the blood dripping from the doll’s wrist.

  He writhed, like a fish on a hook. And he pulled at his wrist trying to free it. Boxes of new Good Guys jammed against the closed hole. But there was no wire tunnel covering the conveyor belt here, and the boxes of finished dolls bunched up, pressing against the mesh, bumping right against Chucky’s wrist, before they tumbled to the floor.

  “Come on, Andy,” Kyle said.

  Chucky looked up at Andy. Go away, Andy thought. Leave me alone!

  “Come on!” Kyle said again, and she pulled him off the platform.

  More boxes clattered to the floor as they ran away.

  Down the steps. Andy heard Chucky screaming at them now, rattling the locked grating, “Come back, you fuckers! Come back here!”

  Come back, you little bastards . . . and maybe I won’t hurt you so much when I catch you.

  Chucky looked at his wrist. The mesh had pinned it to the metal and the barbs were dug straight through—straight through . . . what?

  The flesh, the bone . . . the plastic? What am I now? And what am I going to do about it?

  First things first. The old gris-gris will show me a way out. There has to be way out.

  He wished he hadn’t killed the old priest—using the old man’s own mojo. I didn’t think I’d need him anymore, he remembered.

  I sure as hell need him now.

  Blood splattered from his trapped hand every time he tried to pull or twist it. And the pain—oh, it was class A pain, white-hot pain, pain that made his eyes fill with brilliant red splotches. Total pain.

  And they’re getting away.

  No, he thought, he couldn’t allow that. No, they’d send people here. And they’d find me. And, boy, wouldn’t that be fun?

  He took the knife and wedged it between the grating and the metal frame. He tried to pry the grating up. If I just get a few inches, he thought. Just a few inches, and I can get my mangled hand loose.

  The grating started to buckle upward. Even as the barbs dug into his wrist, chewing up whatever kind of flesh he had.

  It’s moving, he thought. The grate is moving!

  The blade snapped.

  It broke off from the handle as if it were a kid’s toy.

  “Oh, great,” he moaned as the grating fell back into position.

  Now the blade was stuck in the frame.

  He looked up. He saw the girl—oh, he had something special in mind for her—leading the boy to the other side of the factory.

  He looked at his trapped hand. He knew what he had to do. He felt the sweat on h
is brow, running down his Good Guy nose, dripping onto his lip. He took a breath.

  “Yeah,” he said. Then he started twisting, writhing, and turning, working his arm this way and that, back and forth.

  He screamed. His eyes went red with the pain, but he kept at it, back and forth, as if working a piece of thin metal, trying to snap it—he groaned—in two.

  His arm came flying back, dripping tendrils of blood and bits of torn plastic. He saw his hand still trapped, with the wires leading from it.

  But he was free.

  “Which way?” Andy asked her.

  Kyle squeezed his hand. “I—I don’t know, Andy. There has to be a door out of here, some—”

  They walked past a tremendous vat. It smelled like bug spray, and from the steamy hiss it made, she knew it was hot. As they passed, she saw a dripping spigot on the side. Small dollops fell onto the stone floor. She read what it said by the spigot. Caution: Overflow Release.

  And, next to the vat, the conveyor belt carried the torsos of Good Guys. A machine spit heads out onto the belt, squeezing them onto the bodies. Kyle watched, fascinated. The heads had no eyes.

  “Which way?” Andy said.

  “Let’s try this,” Kyle said, running to the right, hurrying, though she didn’t know whether they were moving closer to some exit . . . or farther away. She only knew that they were following the path of the conveyor belt.

  They passed another machine, this one shaped like a giant X. When a body arrived, the machine snapped closed, like a dry cleaner’s steaming pants press. When it popped open, the dolls had arms and legs.

  “This is wrong,” Kyle said, looking around. “We’re heading back to the hole. The place where Chucky is trapped.”

  But when she looked behind her, she saw that the conveyor belt looped back past another machine. She heard a rhythmic tat-tat sound, over and over, as the dolls rolled up to a machine that stapled the red hair on top of each doll’s head.

  Then, just past that, another machine, with two long metal fingers—the last step—jabbed at the dolls, sticking eyes in their dark sockets.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Kyle said. “Or I’m going to lose my mind.”

  Andy nodded. “Yes, but which way, Kyle? How do we get out?”

  Kyle turned all the way around, without seeing an answer to Andy’s simple question.

  While the conveyor belt tried to pull him back he held onto the grating, waiting for an idea. He let go of the mesh and snatched the broken blade from its trap between the grating and the frame.

  The belt started carrying him backward.

  He took the blade and jabbed the broken end into his bloody stump. He screamed and fell to his knees on the belt. The pile of Good Guy boxes was just behind him.

  No time to give in to the pain, he thought. No time at all.

  He looked around, searching the work tables he rolled past, looking for what he needed. The blood was gushing out of his stump, streaming down the blade he had just jammed into the bloody mesh of wires.

  He turned around and saw a platform at the end of the conveyor belt.

  He hopped to the side and saw a table below. Which had just what he needed.

  He grabbed the roll of silvery duct tape off the work table. He brought it up to his mouth and bit the end. He pulled the tape out as far as he could.

  Then he wrapped his stump in it, over and over, closing it tight near the blade, sealing the wound, and then on up his forearm until the blade was secure.

  He stood and jabbed at the air. The pain was still there, but it was ebbing. He slashed left and right, thinking, This gives me great control!

  He made a few more slices and jabs before looking around. Time to get the hell out of here and find them, he thought. The girl first, then Andy—nice and slow. Unless—

  Should I keep the boy alive? Just in case? Maybe I’ll need him. He would figure that out later.

  He sniffed the air, smelling the weird mixture of plastic and blood, and said, “I hate kids.”

  He hurried to the other end of the warehouse, away from the conveyor belt.

  28

  Kyle put a hand down and stopped Andy. They were next to the conveyor belt and the eye machine that jabbed at the dolls as they moved by.

  “There we go, Andy,” she said. “Do you see it?”

  Andy didn’t see much except the machine. It looked like some kind of bird, a prehistoric monster-bird pecking at the dolls. It was supposed to stick their glass eyes in their heads, but it really looked like it was going to peck their brains out.

  “What?” Andy said.

  “Over there, past the conveyor belt. Don’t you see? It’s an exit.”

  Andy looked. She was right. There was a big red sign that said, Exit, over a large brown metal door. There was only one problem. Andy didn’t see any way to get to it.

  He looked up to Kyle and saw that she was searching around with her eyes, trying to find some way to get to the other side, across the conveyor belt.

  But Andy kept drifting back to the bird machine as it jabbed and jabbed . . . and jabbed at the dolls.

  Finally Kyle knelt down next to him. “Looks like that’s the only way out, Andy.” She turned toward the door. “It looks like we have to go across there.”

  She means the belt, Andy realized. She means we have to cross right here, right where the bird machine is. We have to pass it. I knew it, he thought. I knew that we’d have to do this.

  Suddenly this reminded him of a story his mom had read to him. About Arthur and Galahad and a lot of other knights, whose names he had forgotten. They always had to do scary things, to go on . . . quests. The quests were never easy. There were always these really bad things they had to do.

  Like this.

  “Do you understand, Andy?” Kyle said. “We have to cross here.”

  He nodded.

  She smiled at him. “Good boy. I’ll go first. Then you go.” She smiled again. “It won’t be so hard.”

  She took his hand and led him to the belt. The noise it made moving seemed even louder now. She gave his hand a squeeze and then let go of it. He watched her climb up on the metal lip next to the belt.

  He studied the bird machine.

  Jab. Jab. Jab.

  He saw Kyle tense her legs. She was jiggling on her feet. Bouncing around . . . getting ready.

  Jab. Jab. Jab.

  Then he heard her take a deep breath.

  “One,” she said. The bird jabbed at a doll. The machine, the bird’s neck, moved so fast that it became a big blur.

  “Two.” Andy crossed his fingers, and thought, What will I do if she doesn’t make it? What will I do if I’m left alone?

  “Three!” Kyle yelled, and she ran across the belt. The bird reared back. Andy knew her timing was wrong. It’s ready to spring at her. She’ll never make it.

  But he was wrong. It pauses a bit, he saw, when it pulls back. It pauses just before lunging at the next doll.

  And Kyle was across to the other side.

  Her words that terrified Andy: “Okay, Andy . . . now it’s your turn. And there’s nothing to it.”

  Andy licked his lips and for a second didn’t move. He was too busy watching the bird.

  “Come on, Andy!”

  Now he moved. He climbed up to the metal lip.

  So close to the bird now. He almost expected it to turn and look at him.

  It’s probably thinking, This is a tasty morsel that I can catch.

  It was an evil machine. All silvery metal and evil.

  “Andy . . . hurry!” Kyle yelled. “Just watch the machine. Time your run. It’s not hard.”

  But when Andy looked over to Kyle, he saw that she was scared. He saw fear in her eyes. She’s worried about me, he thought. So I guess I should worry about myself.

  He watched the machine. Jab. Jab. Jab.

  I have to catch it just when it pauses. Just when it gets back to its standing position. He licked his lips. He shuffled his feet a bit. He
looked down to make sure there was nothing that would catch his feet.

  Jab. Jab. jab.

  He took a big breath.

  And held it.

  It jabbed. Popped back.

  And he ran.

  And halfway across he felt he was too late, too slow. I’ll never make it, he thought.

  So he did something he had practiced for a long time, whenever he played G.I. Joe. He let himself fall and roll. As he spun around, he saw the twin pokers of the machine start coming down.

  But he was rolling, fast, and then free, tumbling off the belt, right into the arms of Kyle.

  Who hugged him tightly and said, “Good boy!”

  The vent led from one end of the warehouse all the way to the other, right near the conveyor belt.

  And aren’t I just the perfect size, thought Chucky. Absolutely perfect. I was made for crawling through a vent.

  Except, now that he was here, now that he could look out and see them trying to escape, he was stopped.

  By another grating.

  It was too heavy to push. And it was held by four large screws—with the heads on the other side.

  But then he looked at his knife-hand and had an idea.

  Yeah, it just might work.

  He fit the blade into the screw bottoms. It was just sharp enough to gouge a slit in them. He proceeded to unscrew the vent grating from inside. He heard one screw fall to the floor. Then another. And when all four were out, he pushed the grating away from the vent and sent it flying down to the factory floor.

  He leaned out of the hole, just a bit, and dug at the wall with his knife as if he were a mountain climber. He jabbed at the wall and then lowered himself to the floor. He looked at his knife-hand, thinking, Why, it’s better than my old hand—a lot better.

  “I can’t open it,” Kyle moaned.

  Kyle gave the doorknob one more bang with the metal pipe that she’d found on the floor.

  It bounced off the doorknob.

  “Shit, I can’t open it,” she said.

  Andy looked right and left and then asked Kyle a question he already knew the answer to. “Is there another door . . . another exit?”

  Kyle banged the doorknob again. She blew at her hair, to get it off her forehead.