“Stay close,” he said.
“I will.”
Eight
The Round Caught It Through The Left Eye Socket. - Finn
We reached the spot Libby described, tucked behind the narrow stretch where the alley met the sidewalk.
I kept low, shoulders against the brick, sweeping the alley in both directions.
“Where?” I whispered.
Libby’s hot breath against my ear. “There,” she whispered back.
I followed her finger. The concrete looked like any other—cracked, unremarkable. Then I saw it: a rectangular hatch, flush with the sidewalk, its edges ground down by decades of foot traffic until the frame had nearly merged with the ground. Not a standard manhole; this was older.
It was right where anyone could have looked.
I gave both ends of the alley one last look, then moved, crouched low, each footfall deliberate, careful not to break the silence.
The handle was recessed, rusted but intact. I worked my fingers in and pulled slowly, jaw locked, every nerve focused on the sounds from that iron edge. Old metal, decades of corrosion—this could get loud fast.
For a second, nothing.
Then it gave with a dull pop and a faint, rusty creak that carried farther in the silence than it had any right to. I froze, listening. My own heartbeat. The distant presence of wind threading through the alley.
Nothing else.
I lifted the hatch the rest of the way, easing it back against the concrete. The metal dragged with a low, drawn-out scrape that I felt in my back teeth.
Then I looked down.
A ladder descended into absolute black, iron rungs bolted into old stone and slick with condensation. Below that, nothing. A cold draft rose from the opening, carrying the odor of damp earth and standing water.
Good enough.
I turned and motioned sharply to Libby.
“Come on.”
She started toward me—
And then I saw it.
Over her shoulder.
Twenty yards down the alley, half-concealed behind a dumpster—one of them. Its head snapped toward us with that twitchy, mechanical sharpness, too sudden, like a switch thrown. Its entire body seized up for half a second, rigid, fixed on us.
“Shit,” I breathed.
It came toward us at a walk—unhurried, mechanical, shoulders rolling with each stride, fingers opening and closing at its sides. Its jaw had come unhinged and swung loose, workingslightly with each step as though trying to chew something that wasn’t there. One eye was swollen completely shut. The other moved with us—milky, red, and holding nothing behind it.
“Libby—now,” I said, sharper.
She turned and saw it. Something in her face went slack, like she’d forgotten how to hold it together. For a breath she just stood there. Then her body made the decision her mind hadn’t caught up to yet, and she was moving.
I dropped to one knee beside the opening and brought the gun up.
