So far so good.
Next stop, the closet. Deb wasn’t going to leave her prosthetics in there. It would take weeks to get replacements made, and she needed to have spares on her in case something happened to the Cheetahs.
The closet door was closed. She approached it slowly, tightening her grip on the folding knife. Placing her ear against the door, she held her breath, listening for any sounds.
There was only silence.
She shifted from one leg to the other. Without her gel socks, the sockets on the prosthetics were starting to chafe, because they no longer had a perfect fit.
I’ll snag them after I grab my legs.
Deb opened the closet door.
Two naked men were sitting on the closet floor, going through her suitcase, throwing her clothes everywhere. They had bulbous, bald heads, and crooked mouths. One had three nostrils. The other had an empty hole where his nose should be. The whites of their eyes were stop-light red.
Before Deb was even able to gasp, three hands reached out at her, grabbing her Cheetahs, pulling them out from under her so she fell onto her ass.
Deb kicked out, trying to pull away, but the two men were already crawling on her, pawing at her thighs, her hips, her chest.
And that’s when Deb realized, to her horror, that it wasn’t two bodies on top of her.
It’s one body with two different heads.
# # #
Kelly felt sick. Sick and scared and hurt and overwhelmed and most of all, young. She felt more like a first-grader than a teenager.
She looked at Mom, who was in a heated conversation with Maria about which way to go. The pregnant woman, Sue, stood there like a zombie, completely zoned out. JD was sniffing around, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. The only one who seemed to be okay was Cam. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking vaguely bored.
I wish I could act more like him.
Kelly was wracked with worry. Even though she was out of that horrible cell, they were still trapped in these tunnels. And according to Maria, there were a lot of bad people who lived here. Kelly knew that even if they got away, they wouldn’t have anywhere to go. They were in the middle of the woods. The car didn’t work. Maria and Sue and Larry had been here for a long time, and hadn’t been able to escape.
What if we’re trapped here forever?
“Mom?” Kelly said.
“In a second, Kelly.”
Kelly wished Grandma was with them. Mom was strong, but Grandma was strong in a different kind of way. She was calmer, more rational. Though Kelly didn’t know her grandmother very well, she knew that if anyone could get them out of this situation, Grandma could.
“You okay?”
Kelly glanced up at Cam, who had moved next to her.
“Yeah,” she managed.
“You’re very brave,” Cam said.
“You think so?” Kelly hugged herself. “I’m scared out of my freakin’ mind.”
“We’re all scared, Kelly.”
“Even you?”
Cam nodded.
“Even when you... broke that man’s neck?”
Cam glanced away. “Yeah. That was scary. But he was hurting bad and wanted to die, so I did him a favor. Besides, death isn’t so bad.”
“How do you know?”
Cam took off one of his leather gloves and showed Kelly his wrist. It was covered with scars.
“After my friend died, I killed myself.”
“You mean you tried to kill yourself,” Kelly corrected.
“No. I succeeded. I was actually dead for two and a half minutes before they revived me.”
Cam held out his arm, so Kelly could touch it. They scars were creepy, but kind of cool, too. She ran a finger across one, surprised by how bumpy it was.
“What did it feel like?” she asked. “To die?”
Cam shrugged, tugging his glove back on. “It was like going to sleep.”
“It wasn’t scary?”
“There are a lot scarier things than dying, Kelly.”
“Like what?”
Cam stared at her. “Like living.”
Kelly decided she liked Cam. She liked his straight talk, and how open he was.
He’s also kind of cute.
“We’re going this way,” Mom said. “C’mon, Kelly.”
Kelly began to follow.
Cam thinks I’m brave. How do brave girls act around cute guys?
Without second-guessing herself, she reached out and took Cam’s hand.
When she felt him squeeze it back, Kelly wasn’t as scared as she was before.
# # #
As expected, Letti’s room was empty. Florence found the secret entrance in the back of Letti’s closet, and considered going in.
Not yet. I should check all the other rooms first.
Florence was still shaken up by what she’d done to the Sheriff. After witnessing suffering, misery, and man’s inhumanity to man on six continents, Florence would have bet her life she’d never do something so atrocious.
And yet, she’d done it without even hesitating.
Because they have my family.
It put things into perspective. In a big way.
If I’m ready to throw out my ideals and morals for the people I love, why did I spend so much of my life helping strangers?
For the first time ever, she understood why Letti was so mad at her for missing her husband’s funeral. The realization was like a splash of ice water in the face.
I blew it. I’m so sorry, Letti. I’ll make it up to you. I swear I will.
Exiting the Grover Cleveland room, she crept quietly down the hallway and moved one door over to Lyndon B. Johnson.
Never did care for LBJ. Let’s see if anyone is home.
She put her hand on the knob, and found it to be unlocked. Moments ago she’d double-checked the Sheriff’s Colt revolver, and made sure there were two bullets left, one under the hammer. Florence held it at her side and went into the room fast, putting both hands on the gun so it couldn’t be knocked away.
There wasn’t a bed. No desk or dresser, either. The room had an eerie, pink glow to it, coming from three china cabinets along the rear wall.
Florence had seen some things in her day. Some terrible things.
This was one of the worst.
Back when she was a child, a travelling carnival came to town. Her father paid a nickel extra so they could get into the freakshow tent. Florence cringed at the sight of deformed people, some of them real, some fake. A human torso. A woman with bird feathers. An ape man. A fellow who stuck skewers through his cheek and tongue. A woman who ate glass. But the thing that stood out the most in her juvenile brain—the thing that scared her more than anything else—was a jar.
“It’s a pickled punk,” her father had said.
Florence later learned that was a carny term for a baby with birth defects, preserved in formaldehyde. That particular child had four legs and a harelip.
Florence now faced an entire wall of deformed babies in jars, lit from behind. Traces of blood in the preservation fluid made the jars give off a soft, red glow.
My God. There are dozens of them.
Babies with multiple limbs. Babies with no limbs. Some had organs on the outside. Some had feet where the arms should be. Some had flippers like seals. Some were completely covered in fine hair. Some were tiny, their umbilical cords still attached, no more than embryos. Others filled their jars completely, their malformed little bodies crammed inside.
There were misshapen heads, distended bellies, twisted spines, shrunken limbs. Every way the human genome could be perverted was on display.