“Ready?” Nicole asked the group.
“Yup,” Alex replied.
Kaitlyn nodded.
Hannah cried.
NICOLE
“All right,” Nicole said, shoving past Alex, again trying not to step in anything. “Me first, then you two, then Alex. Okay?”
Alex stepped aside to allow the girls to move past him, making more sticky noises as he did.
The sound was starting to get to Nicole. She had to get out of there.
At the bottom of the stairs, Nicole noticed three things. First, that she could still hear David yelling from across the street. Second, that she could also hear Shadow barking like crazy from upstairs in the community centre. Alex had initially wanted to take the dog with him—he argued that she had proven she could handle herself among the mudmen, but Nicole talked him out of it. She didn’t want to have to deal with his losing his dog. Plus, she liked having the dog around. The third thing she noticed was the three mudmen lurching toward them from the living room.
“Crap!” Nicole muttered. She didn’t want to fight them if she didn’t have to. The door was right at the bottom of the stairs, so she turned the locks and threw open the door as hard as she could.
“Crap!”
Two mudmen blocked the door and another three approached the broken living room window. Nicole stood, trying to reach a decision: through the living room against three somewhat gouged-from-glass mudmen? Or, through the door and face two less damaged ones?
The terrified girls stood behind her, offering no suggestions.
“Any time now!” Alex yelled from the stairs, clearly unable to see what had caused the hold up.
“Uh-huh!” Nicole mumbled in reply as she shoved the screen door open and bolted outside. “Two is easier than three!” she yelled, mostly to convince herself that she had made the right decision.
She smacked the first one on the side of its head with her board. The screwdriver went in deep, and the mudman toppled, but it wasn’t dead. It tried to grab at her as she ran by. She heard the girls screaming, but she could tell they were sticking close.
The four mudmen who were left all turned to her and she realized she was also yelling. A battle cry, she told herself, although it sounded more like the shrill fear coming from the girls behind her.
ALEX
Alex hit one of the remaining mudmen, his screwdriver driven deep into its neck. It stood in front of him, clawing at the air, apparently unaware of the fresh, oozing wound. The board kept it a good three feet away as it tried to reach Alex. Alex tried to yank the weapon free, but it wouldn’t budge. Each time he yanked, the mudman took a clawing swing at him. He decided to leave the screwdriver in the thing’s neck rather than risk it grabbing him. He shoved it back, let go of the board, and ran past as it stumbled.
They were almost to the community centre. Most of the mudmen followed, but they were too slow. Their plan had worked. They were victorious! Alex watched as Nicole and the girls reached the door. He was just seconds away from safety!
Why aren’t they opening the door?
Nicole slammed on it with her fists, her board discarded a few feet behind them. The two girls huddled in the frame, shivering.
“What’s the problem?” Alex asked as he joined them. “Open the door!”
“I’m trying, stupid!” Nicole yelled. “It’s stuck!”
“Oh crap, crap, crap!” said Alex as he looked back into the parking lot. The mudmen were coming closer and closer. One dragged Alex’s only defence from its bleeding neck.
“David!” Nicole yelled. “David! Open the door!”
She had to know it was a pointless request. David was still yelling from the back of the building.
“David!” Nicole continued to holler as she pounded on the door.
Alex picked up Nicole’s weapon. In the alcove leading to the door, he wouldn’t get much room to swing, especially with three other people around him, but on open ground he’d be open to attacks from all sides.
“David!”
Shadow barked like mad, just ten feet above them. She was as helpless as they were.
“Open the door! Please!”
Alex could read the name on the sleeve of the closest mudman’s coat: “Doug.”
Doug is going to kill me.
NICOLE
Nicole gave one final pound on the door, her arms and hands throbbing with pain. “No one is coming!” she yelled, in a choked voice. She was furious at herself for this major flaw in their plan. Tears ran down her face, as she turned away from the door. “We’ll have to ... run for it.” The last words almost caught in her throat and came out as just a whisper as she saw the mudmen, already so close and getting closer. They couldn’t run away. Not all four of them. She was behind the other three. She stepped away from the door, not quite sure what she was going to do. Part of her wanted to run; part of her wanted to grab her weapon from Alex and start swinging; part of her just wanted to give up.
CLICK.
The door behind them popped open. Nicole spun on her heels. “GO!” she screamed, as she bolted inside, the two girls close behind.
Alex followed, running straight through and knocking the three girls over. As they lay in a heap on the floor in the darkness, a tangle of limbs and couch cushions, the mudmen scratched at the door just a few feet away. They had come so close to being caught. They watched the door tremble as the weight of the mudmen slammed against it. But it was secure: closed and locked as soon as they passed through. They were safe.
Ryan stood beside them.
Alex and Nicole scrambled to their feet, rushing to the boy—their saviour. Nicole wanted to grab him, to throw him into the air in celebration. She stopped herself and Alex when the small boy backed away, pushing himself tightly into the corner near the rattling door.
“Ryan!” Nicole said, her voice raspy and weak. “You saved us! You—David!” She turned and bolted up the stairs. “We have to get David!”
ALEX
Alex fell to his knees in front of Ryan. “Thanks,” he said as he wiped away a tear. “You’re ... awesome.” He tried to stand, but his whole body ached; he hadn’t noticed until that moment how sore he was. It had been a rough morning. Pulling off his gloves, he looked at his watch.
7:24.
The whole thing had taken less than ten minutes.
Using Nicole’s weapon as a crutch, he got to his feet. “Ryan? We should—”
He stopped when the boy ran past him and up the stairs. Alex took a breath into his aching lungs as the door continued to rattle in front of him. He’d had enough of the mudmen. At least for the day. He slowly turned and dragged himself to the stairs.
“You guys coming?” he said, turning to the girls still huddled on the floor. He didn’t wait for an answer.
KAITLYN
Hannah and Kaitlyn sat on the lobby floor, not sure what to do next. The past few hours—the past few days—were too much for them to handle. Kaitlyn only knew she didn’t want to sit next to the rattling door anymore. Hannah clung to her as they both stood and headed to the stairs. Above them they heard a loud thud.
“That was the worst thing that ever happened!” Kaitlyn heard someone yelling from upstairs. “Don’t ever do that to me again!”
“David,” the girl named Nicole said. “Shut up, okay? I’m serious. Shut up.”
Kaitlyn was walking up the stairs, holding Hannah’s hand, when the younger girl stopped suddenly. She turned back to see Hannah’s face contorted in pure terror. Possibly the most terrified she had seen her yet. A chill ran through her. What if these people are the intruders? What are they going to do to us?!
“Hannah?” The girl seemed so distant at that moment.
Hannah’s watery eyes were frozen on something at the top of the stairs. Slowly Kaitlyn turned, expecting to see one of the kids she they had just come in with carrying one of their sticks, ready to use it on them. Or one of those monsters—
But when she turned, she saw a black
tail move swiftly around the corner out of sight.
“Hannah?” she said again, calmer now. “What’s wrong? The dog?”
Hannah turned to run back down the stairs. Kaitlyn had no doubt that if she hadn’t been holding her, the girl would have run right back outside with those things rather than go upstairs with the big black dog.
They stayed on the stairs for a few minutes. Kaitlyn calmed Hannah down enough to not run outside, but she couldn’t convince her to go up.
“It’s probably a nice dog,” Kaitlyn said, trying to hide the doubt in her voice. She wasn’t even sure if the people that had rescued them were nice, let alone a dog that she hadn’t even clearly seen.
Hannah shook her head, still staring at the upper floor, clearly expecting the big black dog to come back at any moment.
Kaitlyn thought for a moment. “What if they put the dog outside?” The words had barely come out of her mouth before she realized that it wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t put even the worst dog in the world out there with those things. “Or in another room or something?” she quickly added.
Hannah said nothing, but she also didn’t shake her head. Kaitlyn took that as progress.
“I’ll go see if we can do that,” she said and turned to go up the stairs. Hannah held firmly onto her hand and pulled her back down. “Okay. No. I’ll stay here.”
This was getting them nowhere.
“Excuse me?” she yelled up the stairs. “Excuse me?” When no one replied, she called up, “Hey!”
The boy from outside—Alex, she remembered—popped his head around the corner, though she barely recognized him without his helmet or cushions. “What?”
“Do you have a dog up there?” she asked, figuring it was a decent enough place to start the conversation. After all, she hadn’t actually seen it. Maybe it was just a large cat.
“Yup,” Alex said with a smile. “She’s real nice.” He looked past Kaitlyn at Hannah. His face lit up with realization “She’s really, really nice,” he said directly to Hannah. “You should come meet her! She really likes—”
Kaitlyn cut him off. “Is there anywhere you could put him?” Realization or not, she wanted to get upstairs as soon as possible.
“What?”
“Can you put your dog somewhere else? Hannah is afraid of him.”
Alex looked shocked. “No, I can’t put MY dog somewhere else,” he said, more than a hint of frustration in his voice. “What do you want me to do? Put her outside?”
“No, no,” Kaitlyn said. “Just, I dunno, lock him in a room or something?”
“Her! She’s a girl!”
“Sorry.”
“And no! I can’t lock her in a room! She can go wherever she wants!” He stopped for a moment; he seemed genuinely angry. Obviously, she had touched a nerve. “You can go wherever you want, too!” he added, pointing toward the front door.
“We can’t go back out there!” Kaitlyn yelled at him. “You just saw—”
“Yeah, I saw!” Alex yelled, his face reddening. Kaitlyn knew this was going to be a fight she did not have the energy for. Hopefully she could reason with him. “I saw a bunch of mudmen that you guys brought here with all your screaming!”
“What?” Was this jerky boy actually blaming her and Hannah for bringing those things to them? Forget reason. “We were screaming because they were already there!”
“Yeah, but that was probably only, like, a few! Your screaming made more come and they almost killed me and my friends!”
“There was a lot more than a few!”
“Probably not! You probably got scared of the dark or something!”
“I did not! They were coming in through the window!”
“Well why did you leave the window open?” Alex laughed, cruelly. “What are you, stupid or something?”
“No! The window got smashed!”
“And then you started screaming and then they all started coming and then—”
“SHUT UP!”
The yell from above silenced them both. Nicole stood at the top of the stairs, her face red and her nostrils flared. “Both of you shut up. Your argument about screaming is bringing them here BY SCREAMING! Are you both complete idiots?”
“I wasn’t—” Alex started.
“Shut. Up.” Nicole said, though her glare would have done the trick. “Everyone come upstairs and keep quiet. The dog is in a room at the end of the hall and the door is closed, okay?”
Kaitlyn and Hannah both nodded, stunned by the power of this girl.
Alex looked about to argue more, but was stopped by Nicole’s stare before he could even take a breath. He waited on the stairs as Kaitlyn came near enough to whisper, “I’m letting her out, you know. As soon as I get up there!”
“Whatever!” Kaitlyn whispered back, “If you wanna be a jerk and scare a little girl, you do that!”
ALEX
Alex heard Shadow scratching at the door at the end of the hall. “I’m not a jerk!” he called after Kaitlyn, forgetting the threat that Nicole had made. “I just saved your stupid life!”
Kaitlyn simply turned around and narrowed her eyes at him. She led Hannah into the bedroom. HIS bedroom.
“They have to sleep in a different room,” he said to himself. “A girl room and a boy room.”
“You are such a loser,” Nicole said as she walked past him.
He wasn’t sure how much she had heard, but he hoped she’d somehow missed the continued fighting. He waited in the hall for a moment, working up the courage to suggest separate bedrooms. When he walked in, he saw David sitting in the corner, panting, still in his coat and gloves from outside. Nicole and the girl he was just fighting with stood in the middle of the room, looking at Ryan’s mat-fort. The littler girl’s feet stuck out from the fort.
“Leave Ryan alone!” Alex yelled, trying to yank Hannah out. She cried out before Kaitlyn ran up behind him and pushed him away.
“What are you doing?”
“That’s Ryan’s ... thing,” he said, pointing at the fort.
“So?”
“So ...” He tried to think of an answer. “So, Ryan doesn’t like people, so she can’t go in there. Neither can you, so get away from it.”
She looked into the fort. “They seem to be okay.” She smirked at him.
“Well, whatever,” he said as he grabbed Hannah’s ankle and pulled her out, wiggling and crying. “You can’t go in there!” he shouted at her.
“Don’t yell at her!” Kaitlyn said, shoving him again.
“Stop yelling!” Nicole yelled over the two of them.
“We’re not yelling!” Alex yelled back.
“Let go of her!”
“Stop! Yelling!”
“Hey!”
They all stopped at the sound of David’s voice.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the little girl lying on the floor.
Nicole just stared at him. “It’s a girl, moron.”
David shook his head and sighed. “I know that. What is she holding?”
All three looked down at the little girl, specifically at what she was clutching tightly to her chest.
“Where the hell did that come from?” asked Nicole as she bent down to look at the skinny little cat in Hannah’s arms.
“Did she have it with her at the house?” David asked.
“Oh,” Alex exclaimed, walking away, “she’s allowed to have a cat, but my dog has to get locked away? I say we get rid of the cat instead!”
“She didn’t have it with her, you jerk!” Kaitlyn replied. “You were there! Do you remember her carrying a cat across the street?”
“I was pretty distracted by, uh, saving your life!”
The raised voices made the cat scramble in Hannah’s arms. When Hannah let go it ran back into the mat-fort with Ryan.
Everyone looked into the fort, where Ryan sat holding it.
“Ryan, buddy,” Nicole said as she crouched. “Is that your cat?”
In the darkness o
f the little fort, she could see the boy shake his head.
“But you’re taking care of her? Looking after her, right?”
He nodded.
“There you go,” she said, standing, facing Alex. “It’s Ryan’s cat. Are you going to take away Ryan’s cat because we put your dog down the hall?”
Alex said nothing. He glared back at Nicole, knowing exactly what she was doing. She knew he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Ryan. She had that smile on her face. The one she got when she outsmarted him. He didn’t know how David had put up with it his whole life—he was already getting tired of it after less than a week. He decided his only way out was to change the subject with a question. “Well, where did it come from?”
“It probably came from outside,” David said as he finally tugged his gloves off.
“Thank you,” Nicole said putting her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “I never would have guessed that the cat that wasn’t here before came from outside. It doesn’t live at the karate school? Maybe it—”
“Drop it, Nicole,” David said, tossing his gloves into the corner.
“Maybe it does live here,” Kaitlyn suggested. “You know—like you guys do. Do you guys live here?”
Nicole crouched again. “Ryan?” Her voice softened when she spoke to him. “Can I see the cat, buddy? I won’t hurt him, and I won’t let anyone else.” She looked up at Alex. “Okay?”
A moment later, she stood holding the cat. “It’s so small.”
“Is it a kitten?” Hannah asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Nicole said, examining the cat. “I think it’s just small. Like, a runt. She’s real skinny.”
“He,” Alex said, looking on.
“What?” Nicole said.
“He. It’s a boy cat,” he replied, looking back at her with confidence.
“What makes it a boy cat?” Kaitlyn asked.
Alex burst out laughing. “Really? You don’t know what makes a boy a boy? Oh, my God. Well, you see—”
Rise of the Mudmen Page 21