Stirred

I finally touched solid ground, covered head-to-toe in human waste, and when I stepped off the lowest rung of the rope ladder, my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the fractured concrete.

Every muscle in my body trembled uncontrollably, and I couldn’t close my hands into fists—the tendons so stressed from gripping the rungs.

I lay on my side, moaning, and I could’ve stayed there for hours, but the sewage was dripping all over me.

I grabbed the rope ladder, used it to haul myself onto my feet.

My knees quivering.

I gazed off toward the west as the sun sank over this corpse of a town, and felt my soul grow cold. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I would be able to take, but I knew there was a lot more to come.

Luther had recreated Dante’s Inferno, just for me.

And there were six circles of hell still left.

• • •

I stepped down off the tower’s foundation and crawled back through the hole in the fence.

The rain had stopped, and in the puddles of standing water, I glimpsed unbroken reflections of the sky.

In the wake of the rain, water still poured out of a gutter on a building up ahead, and despite my complete exhaustion, I hobbled toward it as fast as I could until I was standing under the waterfall.

For several minutes, I let it pummel every square inch of my body until it had rinsed away the filth.

At last, I stumbled away, clean but soaking wet and already begi

In the last five minutes, the clouds had gone from pink, to purple, to blue, to a dark, steel gray that would be sheer black in a matter of minutes.

The prospect of being in Luther’s playground after dark added an entirely different component to the terror.

“Can you still hear me? Does the earpiece still work?” His voice startled me.

“Yeah.”

“See the factories in the distance?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Start walking toward them.”

The factories—what little I could see of them in the fading light—resembled a steampunk skyline. Soaring chimneys, vents, buildings behind buildings. A labyrinthine maze of vacated industry.

After five minutes, I emerged into a parking lot dotted with light poles, most of which had long since toppled or snapped in half, succumbing to years of rot.

The downed electrical wires lay serpentine and thickened with rust—long brown worms frozen mid slither.

An intense chill descended over me.

I felt a cold draft fu

I was coming up on a three-story brick building—the first in a series of many which, from the top of the water tower, had appeared to interco

“See the double doors?” Luther asked.

My heart rate quickened and it wasn’t merely from the exertion.

“I see them.”

“Head on through. Hope you remember the code from the water tower. Shame if you had to climb all the way back up there in the dark.”

Earlier

He hurt.

He hurt like hell.

The pain meds they’d stashed away were supposed to last for two weeks. But it had only been two days and they had already gone through half of them.

They’d gotten in last night, cold and hungry, down to fumes in their gas tank. Once more they were forced to sleep in the car. Donaldson was constantly being woken by Lucy’s snoring. It wasn’t her fault—along with her nose, part of her septum was missing. Still, more than once that night he’d considered murdering her.

An especially pleasant thought, because not only would it slake the bloodlust that had been building up inside him for years, but it would also mean he wouldn’t have to split the meds.

But he’d sat on the urge.

If everything went according to expectations, he’d get to kill someone today.

Kill someone in a much slower and more painful fashion than boring old strangulation.

Besides, in a twisted kind of way, that girl was growing on him.

Donaldson had never spent this much time with anyone in his entire life. Especially someone he understood on such a base level. He and Lucy had the same needs, same hopes, same fears.

It was truly a match made in hell.

When they woke up that morning, the duo spent the day exploring the deserted town. That fat bitch, Violet King, had sent them here, but hadn’t been specific on where to go. So they had been driving around, cold, hungry, in pain, and growing increasingly frustrated.

By dusk, they hadn’t found anything.

That’s when they’d run out of gas.

Donaldson was revisiting his thoughts of strangling Lucy when they saw the explosion on the other side of town. It was followed sometime later by several gunshots.

They closed in on the action on foot.

“You’re going too fast, D.”

Lucy’s limp had gotten worse, and if she moved any slower she’d be walking backwards.

“We’re so close, Lucy. Don’t give up now.”

“I can’t keep up.”

“Then don’t come,” he snapped. “See if I care.”

“D, please…”

Donaldson stopped. He’d never heard Lucy use the P word before.

He turned around, looked at her, saw the pain etched on her face—

—and he felt bad for her.

Donaldson couldn’t remember sympathizing with anyone, ever. Countless people had begged him for mercy, and all that had done was turn him on.

But Lucy’s “please” didn’t arouse him. Instead, it made him want to help her. Comfort her.

How bizarre.

“Want to rest for a minute?” he asked.

She nodded.

They parked their sorry, lame, mutilated bodies on a decaying bus stop bench.

“Need more meds?” Donaldson asked.

“We’re going through them too quickly.”

“I know. But we can deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes. If tomorrow comes. Let’s worry about today, today.”

They each dry-swallowed two Norco.

The rain had stopped and the sun was setting. It was almost pretty.

“What do you want to do, D? When this is over?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what next? We’re escaped fugitives, and it’s not like we can blend into a crowd. We can’t run forever, can’t hide. They’ll find us.”

“Canada,” Donaldson said.

“How are we supposed to make it on our own? Get jobs?”

“Why do you assume we’ll be together?” Donaldson asked. It came out too harsh, not like he’d intended.

“You mean, when this is done, we split up?”

“We’ve been forced to work together, Lucy. Once we finish this, we can go our separate ways.”

Donaldson waited, hoping she would object, wondering why he cared so much.

“If that’s what you want, D.”

It wasn’t what he wanted. In fact, it was the last thing he wanted. He wondered why he’d said something so stupid.

“We’ll, uh, talk about this later. Right now we have business to attend to. You up for it?”

Lucy nodded.

“Go

She put on a pained smile. “Definitely.”

They walked another block, their shadows growing longer and then disappearing along with the sun. The only flashlight they had was the novelty one, shaped like a frog, on the car keychain.

Donaldson was conflicted. He knew he needed to keep his mind in the game, on what needed to be done, but his head kept ru

Donaldson cleared his throat, but the lump remained.

“Look, I was thinking. It probably is best if we work as a team. Stay together.”