“I didn’t know,” he tried again. “I’m really sorry. If you’ll just let me go, I can—”
“You brought tools,” Two-Head said, matter-of-factly.
“What?” Paul frowned, unsure if he’d heard the freak correctly. He had no idea what it was talking about.
“Tools.”
The creature took one hand off the pole and snapped its fingers. Another mutant ran forward. This one had a long, withered, tentacle-like appendage where its left arm should have been. The right arm was normal, and in that hand it clutched Paul’s tool belt.
“You lie.” Two-Head sighed. “You say you are lost, but you came with tools. You came to fix the sewer pipes.”
“No,” Paul protested. “I don’t work for the city. I’m from Uniontown, for Christ’s sake! I’m just here because—”
“It doesn’t matter. Either way, we still have to kill you.” The statement brought a fresh round of pleas and cries from Paul, but his captors refused to respond. They marched along, almost methodically. Some of them carried crude lanterns. A few had flashlights. Most of them were naked or covered with some type of dried red clay. A few wore tattered, dirty scraps of clothing. One—a child or another dwarf, he couldn’t tell which—looked especially bizarre. It was naked from the waist down, clad only in a once-white T-shirt that said, I GOT CRABS IN PHILLIPSPORT, MAINE. Another was nude, but wore a backward ball cap with a logo for Globe Package Service. Paul wondered if the odd scraps of clothing had belonged to other victims, and if so, what their previous owners’ fates had been.
His thoughts turned to Lisa, Evette, and Sabastian. He quietly wept, wondering if he’d ever see them again, wondering if they’d miss him, if they’d ever find out what had happened to him, if they’d go on with their lives without him. He wasn’t resigned to his fate—not quite yet—but things weren’t looking good. The cords binding his ankles and wrists were strong and tight. No way he could snap them. And some of his captors were physically impressive. Maybe he could have kicked their asses twenty years ago, but middle age had softened him. He swore to a God he wasn’t even sure he believed in that if he got away from here, he’d go straight. He’d get a real job again, something legal, and do right by his family. Sure, he’d justified stealing scrap metal as a means of supporting his loved ones, but look what it had led to?
Paul sobbed. His broad chest hitched with each shuddering, labored breath. The temperature in the tunnel grew slightly warmer. The breeze remained steady. The stench of his captors was foul, but there were other smells in the air. Mildew. An earthy odor—maybe clay or dirt or minerals of some kind? And something else, something that smelled like animal fat cooking in a frying pan. It wasn’t until one of the lanterns sputtered and hissed that he realized what the smell was. They were using fat as fuel. Paul had a sinking feeling that he knew what kind of animal the organic matter had come from. Bile burned his already raw throat. He opened his mouth to scream again, but paused as they came to a sudden stop.
They had emerged in a vast underground chamber—a true limestone cavern, just like the ones he’d taken the kids to a few times. It was brightly lit. Fires flickered in an assortment of rusted fifty-five-gallon drums scattered throughout the space. Stalactites and stalagmites dotted the rocky landscape. Paul found himself trying to remember which one was which, and then uttered a crazy laugh. What the hell did it matter? Geology wasn’t his main concern right now. Regardless, thoughts of high school fluttered through his head. Back then, he remembered the difference by calling stalactites “stalac-titties,” because tits hung. Hence, stalactites hung from the ceiling.
His laughter turned into a choked sob.
There were more creatures in the cave. Some of them were sprawled out on boulders, relaxing, staring at him with intense interest and amusement. Others were engaged in various tasks. Two-Head and the rest of his captors carried him to the center of the great chamber. Paul noticed a series of steel barrels had been set up here. There was some sort of makeshift rack above them, manufactured from angle iron, wooden beams, and pipes. Something dangled over two of the drums—something raw and red and glistening. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. Corpses. Two butchered human corpses. Each one had been strung upside down over one of the barrels, then skinned and gutted. Paul was reminded of the deer processing center during hunting season. The bodies were headless, and he couldn’t tell what sex they had been. They’d been slashed open from neck to groin and spread wide, emptied of their internal organs. These had been people once. Now they were just hollowed out carcasses.
“Oh God. Oh my God . . .”
They hoisted Paul higher into the air and sat the pole into the rack. He dangled over an empty drum, the top of his head just inches from the rim.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Don’t do this! Please don’t do this. We can talk about it, right? You don’t need me. You’ve got two already. I can pay you. I can give you anything you fucking want, okay? Just please don’t do this!”
His pleas turned into nonsensical babble as Two-Head and the others calmly strolled away. Another mutant approached. Paul blinked, staring at the creature from his upside-down vantage point. It stared back at him, blinking with its one, lone eye, which was affixed in the center of its face, giving it the appearance of a mythological Cyclops. Its head was smooth and hairless, and its ears stuck out at odd angles from the side of its head. They reminded Paul of cauliflower. It smiled at him with a broad gash of a mouth, revealing sharp but rotten teeth. In its hand was a long, broad carving knife. The silver blade glittered in the firelight.
“Let me go. Hey, listen to me, man. Do you understand me?”
The Cyclops nodded slowly, still grinning. “I understand you. Some of the younger ones don’t. They never learned the above speech. But us older ones still know it. A few of us can even read.”
“What . . . what are you?”
“I’m Curd.”
“I-is t-that your n-name, or your r-race, or what?”
The Cyclops tilted its head and frowned, staring at him with deep concentration, as if trying to determine Paul’s meaning.
“My name is Curd.”
“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. My name is Paul. Paul Synuria.”
“I don’t care.”
Paul licked his lips. “I know, and that’s okay. But listen . . . Curd. Listen. You don’t have to do . . . whatever it is you want to do. I can make it worth your while to let me go. What do you need?”
“For you to be quiet.”
“Okay. I can do that. But before I do, tell me what you really need? I’ll get it for you, no matter what it is.”
“You have everything we need right here. Your brains and heart and kidneys and lots and lots of meat. We’ll even use your bones.”
“No . . . listen . . . oh God . . .”
“If you were a woman, Scug would want your skin, but he’s busy with them other women right now, so we’ll use it for something else.”
Paul sputtered in confusion.
“You’re not the only one here tonight,” Curd continued, slapping one of the bloody corpses with his free hand. “Noigel killed these two. Smashed their heads up, so we couldn’t use the brains, but that’s okay, because there are plenty more of you left. Scug and the others are hunting them right now. We’ll be busy tonight.”
He raised the knife and stepped forward, seizing Paul’s hair in his fist and entwining his fingers through it.
“No,” Paul screamed. “No, goddamn it! Didn’t you hear me? I can give you whatever you want.”
“You didn’t hear me. I already said, you’ve got everything we want right here with you. We’ll use all of you, after I’ve bled you out. That’s how we were taught, and that’s how we teach the little ones. Every single scrap of you will be put to use.”