Passenger

I stood over him. I shined the light onto the kid’s face. His orange hair was dark with filth, plastered down to his scalp with the mud of dust and sweat and blood.

“Is it a way out?”

“That’s all I know,” he said. “I ain’t never been no further than the river. And I stopped coming down here once I was left on my own.”

“Left?” I said. “You knew that other boy. The one up on the hook.”

Qui

I nudged him with my foot. “Well? You did that to the kid, didn’t you, Qui

“Fair enough, Billy. Fair enough,” Qui

Okay, I thought, so everything I ever guessed about this fucker turned out to be true. So how come it still felt like he’d just kicked me in the balls?

I swallowed. “I appreciate you finally being straight with me.”

And Qui

It was going to be like this now. No more games between me and Qui

Now I realized I was wrong about so many things.

“Get up,” I said. “You’re coming, too.”

“Leave me here.”

“If I leave you here, Qui

We walked.

Qui

In the quiet now, no ru

At first, I jumped when the flashlight’s beam ricocheted off the surface of the river. It almost looked like a glistening snake out there, sliding toward us. I stopped and watched, hoping Qui

“Please tell me there aren’t any monsters in that water.”

“If there are, I don’t know about ’em, Billy.”

“No worms?”

Qui

It was a hundred feet wide, deep and fast.

The river cut across the main cha

It had to flow out somewhere, I thought, maybe into the Endless, but there was no way of following it down the impossible cascade.

I could smell the water, feel the dampness rising in warm humid billows through the fetid air of the Under. And I realized how parched I was, how desperately I wanted to tear myself out of my pants and boots and plunge my filthy body into it.

But I was afraid.

I flashed the light on Qui

“It’s good, Billy. Trust me.”

Yeah. Right.

“Get in.”

Qui

“Strip down and get in the water. Or I’ll fucking throw you in.”

Qui

“Don’t look at me,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t look at me, Billy. I don’t like it. It’s embarrassing.”

I rolled my eyes. Like Qui

Qui

His naked body glowed luminescent white in the darkness of the Under. He gave me a dirty look, limping bad while keeping his hands fa

“Don’t look.” Qui

The grown-up, self-conscious, angry Qui

“Fuck you, Qui

He turned away from me and awkwardly dropped into the river.

The edge plunged straight down. The river flowed through a square-walled concrete cha

Qui

“There. You happy now, Billy?”

I nodded. “I guess I am.”

I dropped the flashlight and backpack. As quickly as I could, I stripped out of my boots and pants, and holding on to my knife, I jumped into the river after him. For a moment, I didn’t care what kind of horrid monsters might be swimming around below the surface, because I believed that I’d never felt anything as good in my entire life as that rushing, powerful flow against my exhausted body.

I drank, I swam, scrubbed the flakes of filth and blood from everywhere on me, out of my hair; and I was finally clean, reborn. But the current was so strong that it was a struggle for me to swim back to the safety of the edge. I understood how someone like Qui

And with my eyes just above the surface of the river, I could see the dimmest trace of a gray line—light—far away, down the tu

There was a way out.

“Qui

No answer.

I called him again. “Qui

Nothing.

I realized that I’d drifted far from the spot where I left my flashlight and clothes lying at the edge of the river. I’d intended to wash out my piss-soaked pants and scrub the black mold from those filthy boots.

Out in the darkness, a good fifty yards from the fading glow of our dying flashlight, I pulled myself from the river and started back to where I’d discarded my things.

That’s when I saw it.

A red slash floating in the blackness of the cave.

I rubbed my eyes. The red glow—I recognized it instantly—meant only one thing. Hunters. But it hovered above the exact spot where I’d dropped my clothes, a hooked slash of fire like a shepherd’s crook, a thin, beckoning finger in the dark that dipped and jerked nervously.

I froze, waited.

It was on Qui

No wonder he didn’t want me to see him naked, tried to cover his body in front of me. He wasn’t embarrassed; he was sick.

He had the bug.

And he was turning into one of them.

That’s how it happens—how it starts. With the little mark.

And he had no idea I’d been standing there watching him in the dark while he panicked and pulled his pants on so quickly to cover himself; fumbling past the injury on his foot while he thought I was bathing.

I closed my eyes as tight as I could, and opened them again.

The little red mark was gone.

Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe it was from the water, or from the black salt I’d crawled through. Maybe it was just a stain on my eye from having looked away from the flashlight.