But the only reply was the sound of heavy feet shuffling against the asphalt.
Spider turned to run, but they were on him in an instant—snarling and clawing at him like rabid dogs.
“Not in the face!” Spider screamed, but a looping right caught him flush on the nose, and down he went.
The alley started spinning, and all he could see was a blurry montage of fists and elbows coming at him. He was on the verge of blacking out when a commotion at the far end of the alley cut the beatdown short.
“Hey! Get away from him!”
Spider recognized Grady’s voice amid the cacophony as he rolled onto his back. The silhouettes scurried down the alley, disappearing around the corner, leaving him in a crumpled heap.
Grady dropped his bike and ran toward Spider. “Dude, you OK?”
Spider stood on wobbly legs, still clutching a swatch of fabric torn from his attacker’s clothes in a death grip. “Lucky you got here when you did. I was about to mess those guys up.”
“Who were those dudes?” Grady asked.
“Don’t know,” Spider grunted between breaths. “There were too many of ’em…came at me too fast…musta been like ten or twenty guys.”
Grady noticed the wet spot on Spider’s pants. “Dude, you need to change.”
“That’s rage sweat,” Spider protested. “I was about to get medieval on ’em.”
“Whatever, bro,” Grady said. He walked through the alley until he came to the dead end at the construction fence. Whoever they were, they’d just disappeared.
He took a tentative step forward and hit a column of hot air rising in the middle of the shaded alley where none should be.
Grabbing hold of the manhole cover, he pulled as hard as he could, but it was heavier than he thought. “Spider, get over here.”
Together they pulled the lid off, and a blast of hot air punched them square in the face, filling their nostrils with the smell of ammonia.
“Listen,” Grady whispered, straining his ears. “You hear that?”
“With those satellite dish ears, ya might be pickin’ up a radio signal.”
“Shut up,” Grady said. “Listen.”
They could hear splashing echoing in the distance, like feet moving through a puddle on a rainy day.
“Sounds like they went this way,” Grady said.
Spider grabbed Grady’s arm before he could climb down. “We should get back-up.”
* * *
They followed the lights strung up along the sewer tunnel, sloshing through the stagnant, ankle-high water. They weren’t really sure who they were looking for, or what they would do once they caught up with them.
“Looks like someone was down here before us, workin’,” Drew said, waving his flashlight back and forth. The section of sewer was among the oldest in the city, but the crumbling brick facing looked like it’d been patched only recently.
Spider agreed. There couldn’t be any other explanation for the lights. “Yeah. Yeah, must be city workers or somebody.”
A dull moaning echoed through the tunnel like a banshee’s wail, freezing them where they stood. The sewers ran beneath the city for miles and were the ideal hideout for zombie goldfish, mutant alligators, or romantically disfigured opera singers.
“Dude, what was that?” Grady asked.
“D-d-don’t know,” Spider stuttered.
“Better keep track of where we at,” Drew said. “Easy to get lost down here.”
“Real easy,” Spider agreed.
“Whatcha mean, real easy?” Grady said.
“Ya don’t know?” Spider asked. “Back in the day a buncha kids disappeared down here.”
Drew laughed. “Man, that’s just an urban myth, like Bloody Mary or Men in Black.”
“Happened for real,” Spider said. “Ya ever hear of Ritchie Torrance?”
The name didn’t sound familiar. “He go to Bixby?” Grady asked.
“He did,” Spider said, “back in the day. He was on his way to school one morning and just disappeared. Cops searched the whole city for him, but the dogs tracked him to the sewers. The only thing they ever found was a piece of his shirt and a smiley face spray-painted on the ground next to it.”
Grady’s eyebrows arched. “Smiley face graffiti?”
“Smiley face graffiti equals Smiley Face Witches,” Drew said. “Another urban myth.”
Their beams flashed across some unexpected graffiti, deeper in the tunnel than most taggers would dare to venture.
“That don’t mean nothin’,” Drew insisted. “Lotsa taggers do that kinda stuff.”
Seeing a creepy smiley face grinning back at them at that exact moment seemed like a spooky coincidence, so they picked up their pace, eyes shifting back and forth, suddenly more aware than ever of their surroundings.
“Dude, what’s that stickin’ outta the water?” Grady asked.
Drew poked at the obstruction with his flashlight. “Looks like bones. Some kinda animal or somethin’.”
Spider held his flashlight beneath his chin, up-lighting his face like a jack-o’-lantern. “Or the bones of Ritchie Torrance.”
Grady looked back at him, trying to keep a straight face, but couldn’t help from busting out into nervous laughter.
They left the anonymous bones behind, pushing forward until the tunnel opened up into a four-way junction. Iron grates blocked the tunnels leading south and west, but a ladder led up out of the junction. Most curious of all, a steel hatch blocked the way up instead of the manhole cover they’d expected.
“Where ya think we are?” Spider asked.
“Dunno,” Grady said with a shrug. “That hatch looks brand new. Maybe we’re under a bank.”
“One way to find out,” Drew said.
He climbed up the ladder and gave the hatch’s wheel a turn.
* * *
They emerged from the darkness into a white room—whiter than white, white walls, white floor, white ceiling, and white diffuse lighting bouncing back and forth between every polished surface in an infinite loop from which there was no escape.
“Where we at?” Spider asked. “Did we die? Is this heaven?”
“Chill out,” Drew said. “We’re in the school bunker.”
“Ya sure?” Spider asked.
The blueprint had changed since their last visit, but Drew was sure. The sundries and janitorial supplies were gone, replaced by computer stations and electronic equipment stacked to the rafters.
“Looks like some kinda super-villain lair,” Spider said.
Grady whipped out his phone and hit record. “Where they gettin’ the money for all this?”
“Dunno. Bake sales maybe,” Drew said.
“W-w-w-we ain’t supposed to be here,” Spider stuttered. “Maybe w-w-w-we should go.”
“Naw. Let’s look around for a while,” Drew said.
Monitoring devices printed out data at a steady pace, the sheets piling up in contiguous ribbons on the floor. Drew flipped through a few pages but couldn’t make anything of the numbers, so he put them aside.
They navigated through the rest of the bunker until coming to a security door that prevented them from exploring any further. Drew remembered the DO NOT ENTER warning stenciled above the door from his first visit. And though there was a keypad on the adjacent wall, the door itself was cracked open.
“Guess someone forgot to close it all the way,” Drew said.
“Whatcha think is in there?” Spider asked.
“Don’t know,” Grady said.
The door opened into another antiseptic white room, half the size of the bunker they’d just come from. A cellblock ran from one end of the room to the other, illuminated by twin banks of lights running along the length of the block.
Drew’s first thought was that the room looked like Frost’s mouse penitentiary, though cages that size suggested something bigger than mice.
Snorts and grunts coming from inside the cells gave them pause to go any further,
but the need to know drove them forward, their hands and feet moving of their own accord.
Spider held the torn swatch up next to the first cage. “Didn’t Ramone used to wear a shirt like this?”
“Yeah, dude,” Grady nodded. “I remember him wearing that shirt before. He wore it, like, all the time. But I don’t remember Ramone ever lookin’ like…like that.”
“Ramone,” Drew whispered. “Ramone.”
Ramone’s skin fluctuated in response to hearing his name called, shifting from solid to translucent and back to solid again.
Spider read the placard bolted to cage’s base. “Serial number three-one-oh-six-three-four-two-one. Code name: Mask.”
They tried to get closer to get a better look, but Ramone retreated back into the shadows with uncanny elasticity, organs pulsing beneath a layer of gelatinous fat that exposed his skeleton like an X-ray.
“What’s that thing he wearin’?” Spider asked.
“Dunno,” Drew said. “Some kinda harness or collar or somethin’. Kinda looks like the thing that Romeo was wearin’.”
“Whatcha think happened to ’em?” Spider asked.
“Maybe he’s sick, maybe he’s contagious,” Drew said. “Maybe that’s why he’s down here. Might be why this place smells like a hospital.”
Grady called them over to the other side of the room. “Hey, I think this one is Donovan.”
Spider read the placard. “Serial number three-one-oh-six-three-four-two-two. Code name: Howl.”
“Where’s that clicking sound comin’ from?” Drew asked.
“Think it’s him, dude,” Grady said. “Think it’s his teeth.”
The clicking got faster and faster until the frequency was so high that he sounded like a chainsaw running.
“How do ya know?” Spider asked.
“Call his name,” Grady said.
“Donovan?” Spider muttered weakly.
Donovan hung upside down inside the cage, the membranes between his elongated limbs flexing and relaxing with each breath. Long, loose strips of skin sloughed off his body, revealing glistening scales and a geometric pattern beneath that seemed more reptilian than human.
“Dude, since when did he wear dreads?” Grady asked.
“Those ain’t dreads,” Drew said. “They look more like…tentacles.”
“He’s got the same harness that Ramone—that that thing Mask has,” Spider said.
“Dude, we should get outta here,” Grady pleaded. “Whatever they got might be contagious.”
“Not yet,” Drew insisted. “There’s one more cell we ain’t checked yet.”
They dragged themselves to the last cage in the cell block, afraid to look, but more afraid not to. They’d accounted for two of the three special studies kids, and there was only one more left.
Drew read the placard. “Serial number three-one-oh-six-three-four-two-three. Code name: Tusk.”
Harley stared back at them with burning red eyes set beneath a thick bony ridge, the remains of his clothing hanging from his hulking carcass in tattered shreds.
“Dude, look how ripped he is. He’s huge!” Grady said.
“Harley?” Drew said.
Harley lowered his gaze and flashed a predatory grin, gleaming canines hanging over his lower jaw like a saber-toothed tiger.
“Harley?” Drew said again.
Harley issued a low-frequency chuff and then slammed against the bars with rabid ferocity, slashing at Drew’s throat with razor-sharp talons.
Drew jumped backward like a scalded cat, getting as far away from the cage as he could.
He stood there for a moment, trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing, but he couldn’t; the big picture was too big for him to handle. The kids in the special studies program were all here—barely recognizable caricatures of what they were before—but it was them. He was sure of that.
“At first I thought this Crypto-Punk thing was just a fad,” Drew said numbly. “Just a bunch of dumb kids doin’ the latest dumb thing.”
“I’m standing right next to ya,” Grady sighed.
“But the changes are real,” Drew said. “And they’re gettin’ worse.”
Spider noticed steam rising from a cup on the adjacent workbench, something they’d missed when they first came in. “That cup’s still hot.”
“So?” Grady said.
“So, the cup’s still hot,” Spider repeated. “These cages are locked. That means someone let ’em out, maybe to feed, to go potty, whatever.”
“Which means someone else is here!” Grady said, cutting him off.
They heard the door at the opposite end of the bunker creak open.
“Let’s get outta here,” Drew said, and they scrambled back through the door and toward the ladder leading back to the sewer.
CHAPTER 5
“Mmm, you like to live dangerously,” Miss Croy purred. “Not many men are brave enough to order spaghetti while wearing a white suit.”
The hostess seated them in a booth in the corner, beneath a collection of autographed photos hanging from the restaurant’s bare brick wall. The last-minute dinner invitation surprised the Vice-Principal, but he accepted when his other plans fell through.
“Actually it’s more of a light gray,” he mugged, unfolding his napkin and laying it across his lap. “But I was an astronaut, remember? I wore a white suit for almost twenty years. Besides, sometimes you have to take chances.”
She pulled her dress strap back over her shoulder and caught him looking. She waited for him to turn away, but he didn’t, which meant she’d picked the right dress for the occasion.
“Yes, you do,” Miss Croy said. “Yes, you do. But take too many chances and you get sloppy, you overlook things—like that ink pen in your coat pocket.”
He looked down at the stain spreading from his leaking pen like an ink blot test. “Damn it. That pen cost me…never mind how much it cost me. It’s not supposed to leak.”
“Like I said, you take too many chances, you overlook things,” she said, opening her purse.
She fanned a handful of photocopies across the table. “Turns out some weird things have been happening at schools all across the country during the last few years, kinda like what’s happening now at Bixby with all this Crypto-Punk business.”
Frost considered the newspaper clippings with a tense smile. “You’ve been busy. But what’s this got to do with me?”
“I can connect the dots,” she said. “I checked your resume and the dates and places line up. Whatever you’ve been doing here, you’ve been doing across the country, too.”
“And what do you think I’ve been doing, exactly?”
“I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not sure that I care,” she said. “But judging by your e-mails, there’s a lot of money being…”
“You’ve been reading my e-mails?” he snapped. “How’d you manage that?”
“I have my ways,” she revealed with a mischievous smile. “Nothing that happens in that office happens without me knowing about it.”
“So what do you want?” Frost asked.
“I want in,” she cooed. “I want a piece of the action.”
Frost leafed through the clippings while trying to decide his next move. “What makes you think that I want a partner?”
“Because you’re smart,” she said. “Because how else are ya gonna handle Old Man Hoyt?”
She took a sip of wine, emboldened by the sudden look of surprise on his face. “The old geezer’s no fool, despite his reputation around the district. But I can take care of him for you.”
“How?” he asked. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course, hypothetically speaking. But let me worry about that,” Miss Croy said. “I’ve been pretty much running things since he started the retirement countdown. Even got his signature down pat.”
Frost took a sip himself. “How’d you manage that?”
She snorted and wiped her mouth. “He had
a stroke a few years back. He started complaining about numbness in the left side of his body, which was perfect ’cause it matched the dumbness in the rest of his body.”
Frost made up his mind much faster than she’d expected. He raised his glass and smiled at her through gritted teeth. “To our new partnership.”
She flashed a wry smile and clinked glasses. “To us.”
The server backed up to the table with their orders, juggling a towering stack of steaming plates so precariously balanced that the shifting of a single crouton would result in disaster.
“Miss Croy!”
She looked up, shocked that she recognized him. “Mr. Birdsong?”
Miss Croy’s unexpected appearance caught Birdsong by surprise, throwing off his equilibrium. He tangoed around the table, trying to balance the unbalanced stack on his tray, contorting his body until the tower finally stabilized.
“Got it!” he exclaimed.
But the vengeful gods of kitchen disasters punished his arrogance for building his tower so high in the first place. The top plate shifted, and the stack tipped forward ever so slightly, but it was enough. The dishes cascaded across the floor, shattering on impact and soaking the carpet in the soup of the day.
* * *
The next day, Drew found Old Man Hoyt in his office bent over his desk, one eye pressed against a giant magnifying glass like a nearsighted Cyclops.
Drew waited until he was finished, not wanting to interrupt him during such a delicate operation. Just standing there in his office, uninvited and without being in trouble, felt weird, like showing up at a birthday party without a present.
“When I retire, I’m gonna have a lot more time to untie flies than I do now,” Hoyt said, adjusting the vice for a better angle.
Drew’s eyebrows arched. “Ain’t you supposed to tie flies, not untie them?”
“Only if you like fishing,” Hoyt grumbled. He finished up and pushed the equipment off the side of his desk into the trashcan where it landed with a clang. “I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon. You haven’t blown up anything else, have you?”
Drew pushed one of the visitor’s chairs up close to Hoyt’s desk and sat down. He leaned forward in case anyone was eavesdropping. “There’s something going on in the school bunker,” he whispered.
Hoyt waited for him to finish and then realized that he had. “And?”
That wasn’t the response Drew expected. “Maybe if I show you,” he said, standing up.
“Sit down. I’ve seen it,” Hoyt said.
“You have?”
“Of course I have. Just because I’m retiring doesn’t mean I’m not on top of things. The Vice-Principal showed me everything.”