CHAPTER EIGHT

-Noodle-

When I was very small, I was one of 23 children who were trained to be fearless. Under the tutelage of Mr. Kyuzo, we studied every martial art to perfection. Judo. Praying Mantis. Jujutsu. Tai Chi. Every fighting form you can imagine and more.

The Japanese government believed that with such an arsenal at our fingertips we would become a new breed of warrior. Fearless, yet obedient tools to be dispatched in times of crisis…and then thrown away.

Luckily, I escaped that fate, but thanks to the specialized training I underwent, there are very few things that frighten me. The expression on Taro-kun's face when the man with the knife burst into the kitchen was one of them.

Eyes bulged wide, jaw hung slack, skin bleached gray…the raw, uncensored fear in that look was so potent it was contagious and I was terrified for him. He was a child trapped in a nightmare. I had to save him.

I was on my feet and at the kitchen door before I could even process what I was doing. I do not remember standing up. I do not remember running across the room. I only remember looking at Taro-kun's terror-stricken face one moment and standing in front of the door the next. It never even occurred to me to worry about Russel or 2D or Murdoc until I was flinging the door open.

I paused with one foot out in the corridor and one still in the kitchen. Should I go back? I wondered. 2D is in no condition to defend himself. That man could kill him. That man could kill all of them.

Beside me, Taro-kun's fear had graduated into hysteria. His eyes were still gaping wide open and now there were tears dribbling down his cheeks as he made a desperate grab for my arm. When his immaterial hands passed through my arm like cold smoke, it only seemed to intensify his panic. His body began to convulse with what might have been sobbing, but even now he was eerily silent. I did not need to hear him to understand that he desperately wanted me to run.

There was a rapid-fire thud of footsteps behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Russel running for the door with 2D draped over his shoulder. He didn't appear to have any trouble managing the added weight, though 2D's head was flopping against his chest with every step he took. I waited until they were a few steps away from the door and then I threw it wide open and threw myself out of their way.

Taro-kun was off and running the instant I moved. Behind me, I heard Russel barrel out into the corridor, but there was nothing to indicate that Murdoc was behind him.

"Wait, Taro-kun!" I shouted. The words only seemed to encourage him to pump his legs faster.

I wanted to know that Murdoc was all right. At the same time, I had an irrevocable feeling that losing Taro-kun while he was in such a state would be a terrible mistake. That look of fear in his eyes. I'd seen it before. It was the type of fear that stays with you, fermenting until it turns you into something dangerous, rotten, and sick. Worried as I was about Murdoc, the thought of a dangerous spirit with all the sensibility of a terrified child worried me more.

I caught Taro-kun at the lift. He was huddled against the doors with his arms hugged up over his head. He did not seem to know that I was there.

"Taro-kun," I whispered. His shoulders gave a sobbing jump, but he did not turn around. I looked over my shoulder. The hall was empty. My chest went tight with surprise. Where did Russel go with 2D? I wondered. Where is Murdoc? Where is the man with the knife?

I opened my mouth to call out to Taro-kun again and promptly closed wit when I realized that doing so would only attract the man that he was so afraid of directly to us. I took a step closer to the shivering boy and reached for his shoulder. His body went rigid when my hand passed through it. I had just enough time to wonder whether I had hurt him before he whipped around to face me. My breath caught in my throat. His face was contorted into a hostile mask, lips curled into a snarl like a trapped wild animal. The cold that always hung in the air around him intensified to such a point it felt like a heavy, physical force pushing against me.

I took an involuntary step back. I could still feel the cold clamping around my chest, threatening to choke me. "Taro-kun," I gasped. "Please…."

Taro-kun's expression melted into one of shock at my choked plea, as if I had not been the one he had expected to see in front of him when he turned around. He brought a shaking hand up to cover his mouth and slumped against the elevator doors. His face was partially hidden by his mop of dark hair, but I could tell that he was crying in earnest now.

I do not know how or when he summoned the lift, but after a few seconds the doors slid open and he stumbled inside. I hurried in after him. "Taro-kun," I whispered. "Please calm down and look at me."

He buried his face in his hands and turned away. I frowned. Could he be upset because he tried to hurt me? "It is all right, Taro-kun. You did not hurt me. Now please look at me."

Slowly, he turned around. He did not take his hands away from his face, but he lowered them enough to peek out at me over his fingertips.

"Do you know that man?"

He backed away from me until he was pressed against the wall before he gave a small nod.

I took a deep breath before I asked my next question because I was almost certain that I knew the answer. "Did he hurt you?"

Taro-kun sank down until he was sitting on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest. He was shaking with silent tears.

"I am sorry, but you have to answer me, Taro-kun," I said. "Did that man hurt…." I trailed off when I noticed that the lift was moving. I wanted to ask him where he was taking us, but he was hunched into a ball with his face hidden behind his knees, rocking himself back and forth.

He did not come out of his protective crouch until the lift stopped. When the doors opened, he stood up and ran out into the corridor without looking at me. I hurried after him. He was moving much faster than his small legs should have allowed. I was forced to run to keep pace. He picked up speed as he led me down the corridor, out into the car park. By the time I had reached Murdoc's Winnebago, he was already at the far wall—and then he was gone.

For a moment I was certain that I had lost him. Then I remembered the crack in the wall—a narrow gap that had opened sometime during the band's absence from Kong. I had noticed it when I first returned to Kong, but with the rest of the building in a state of disease-ridden filth I had paid it little mind. In my struggle to make the building livable, I had completely forgotten about it. Now I feared that had been a mistake.

With a sense of dread sitting heavy in my chest, I hurried towards the crumbled out hole in the wall. There was a pale light inside the hole; indication enough that this was the place Taro-kun was leading me. I ran through the hole towards the light and into someplace cold and dark and cramped.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was a stench that went beyond rancid; a concentrated wave of putrefaction that made my eyes water as it slammed into me like a physical assault. I clapped my hands over my nose and mouth, but it wasn't enough to block it out. I could still feel it burning in the back of my throat.

Tentatively, I took a few steps deeper into the cavern. My foot hit something slick and gooey. I had to take my hands away from my face to catch my balance and the smell invaded my senses, making me dizzy, making me sick—I was going to be sick.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the feeling to pass. I knew as I stood there that I had to look at whatever it was that I had slipped on. I was positive that it was what Taro-kun had led me there to see, but I did not want to see what was giving off that terrible smell because I knew what it was. It was the same smell that permeated the twisted nightmares I had experience night after night ever since I had returned to Kong.

Part of me wanted to believe that this too was a nightmare. That if I tried hard enough, I would wake up sweat-soaked and shaking, but safe in bed. If I just keep my eyes closed, I thought. If I just keep them closed….

I looked. Lying in front of me was a heap of blackened, rotting meat. With only Taro-kun's sickly yellow glow to light the cavern, it was too dark to make out the more intricate details of what was in front of me, but I could see grimy scraps of cloth that might have been clothes between the countless carrion creatures that were writing in the putrefied flesh. I could also see that it was vaguely the size and shape of a young boy.

"Oh, Taro-kun," I whispered. "I am so sorry." I tore my eyes away from the body to look at Taro-kun—and then I saw the other bodies.

There were many of them, all in various stages of decay. The more recent dead still bore evidence of the violence that had befallen them. Angry slash marks. Limbs twisted at sickening angles. One of them was missing all its fingers. They were all female. I knew that even the ones that were too far gone to tell by a simple glance were female—and none of them had hair. Seeing them all together I noticed that all of them had been cruelly shorn.

Then that means that box of hair in the instrument room was…. I shuddered at the thought—and then I remembered something else. A female newscaster with lipstick on her teeth, her cinnamon-red lips dancing up and down to say three words that made my blood run cold: "The Essex Scalper."

I realized then with startling clarity the truth behind the nightmarish visions that had been plaguing me: They weren't trying to hurt me or any of us. They were trying to scare us away to protect us from something much, much worse.

-Russel-

Everything was happening too fast. I'd barely even begun to process the fact that there was a crazy guy with a hunting knife in our kitchen when I saw Noodle running for the door. I wanted time to think of a plan; time to think of some way to get all four of us out of there safely, but there was no time think—only to act.

2D was lying on the ground beside me. I'd had trouble lifting him up only seconds before, but with panic and adrenaline both hitting me hard, I had no trouble hefting him over my shoulder. Noodle was already at the kitchen door. I crossed the room in three steps to run out into the hall after her.

I didn't stop running once I was out in the hall. With 2D barely conscious and nothing to defend us besides my own bare hands, I knew I couldn't afford to have the intruder catch me. I was halfway to my room before I realized that Noodle and Murdoc weren't with me.

I stopped and looked up and down the hall for any sign of them or of the man with the knife. The hall was empty and dead silent. That silence put me on edge. Even in the middle of the night, Kong is never quiet. It's like the building itself is a big, diseased beast. Now it felt like the whole building was holding its breath waiting for something terrible to happen.

I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard the groan. I was so sure that something was about to pop out of the shadows it took me a couple of jelly-kneed seconds to realize that it was just 2D.

Heaving a sigh, I wiped at a couple of beads of sweat that were threatening to roll into my eyes and muttered, "God; don't do that again, D."

I have no idea if he heard me, or whether he was able to understand me if he did. His only response was to start shivering.

I shook my head. I've got to get D someplace safe before I can look for the others, I thought.

By the time I got to my room, 2D was shaking so badly I was afraid I was going to drop him on the floor. I managed to make it across the room and dump him on the bed instead. He didn't seem to notice the rough landing. He just laid there with his eyes half open and glazed as his body continued its uncontrollable shaking. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought he was having some kind of a fit.

I reached for the covers on the bed but stopped when I noticed that they were still in a rumpled knot around the spot were Noodle had slept only the night before. After everything else that had happened, it was hard to believe that it had all started when I'd woken up with a crick in my neck from sleeping on the floor that same morning. Zombies, hypothermia, a broken-down Geep…the hours might as well have been years.

I tried to convince myself that 2D's shaking was a good sign as I smoothed out the tangle of sheets and blanket so I could cover him with it. It's just his body trying to warm itself up, I thought. Shivering equals movement. Movement equals warmth. It made sense. I knew it made sense, but seeing him convulse like that, I couldn't help feeling bad for him.

"OK, D," I muttered once I finished piling the blankets on top of him. "I have to find Noodle and Murdoc, but I won't be gone for long. Just wait here, OK?"

I was almost out the door when I heard 2D mumble something through his chattering teeth. It was too quiet for me to hear what he'd said. Whatever it was, I decided to take it as a sign he'd heard me. "Don't worry, D. I'll be back."

Out in the hall, the silence had gotten so intense I could feel it pressing in at me from everywhere, like the water pressure on a deep sea sub. With an armed man intent on killing all of us stalking the halls, I knew it wouldn't be long before something broke and it all came crashing down. I wanted to make sure we were out of there before that could happen.

I inched down the hall, listening for any sign of Noodle or Murdoc. I didn't hear anything. It occurred to me that they could have gotten to almost anywhere in the building by then. That wasn't a very encouraging thought. Kong is so big it can be very hard to find somebody when you don't know where they are—and that's when the people you're trying to find aren't hiding from a crazy man with a knife.

I saw the blood when I got to the junction that connected my hall to the one with the kitchen. It wasn't much—just a few splotches on the ground and a couple of smudges of the wall—but it was enough to tell me that someone was hurt.

There was more blood on the door directly across the hall from me. It was smeared all around the handle, like somebody had tried to wipe it off and only made it worse. I stood there for a long time wondering what to do about the door. The question wasn't whether or not there was somebody inside, but who was inside. I knew that there was a good chance it was Murdoc or Noodle and that there was also a good chance that they were hurt. But then, there was also the disturbing possibility that it was the man with the knife huddled there in the dark waiting for someone to come along so he could take them by surprise.

Finally, I decided that for better or worse, I had to find out what was behind that door. I walked across the hall and stopped with my hand on the doorknob, straining to hear anything that would give me a clue as to what was inside. The only sound I heard was my heart thumping against my chest hard enough to hurt.

I had a stupid urge to knock on the door and say, "Muds, you in there?" or "Noodle, is that you?" Instead, I took a deep breath and clenched my hand into a fist. If that crazy guy is in there I'll smash his head in, I thought.

"OK," I whispered. "Here we go."

Summoning up as much intimidating bravado as I could scrape together, I poured it all into a roar that dragged from the pit of my stomach, threw the door open, pulled my fist back for a one hit KO punch—and stopped mid-swing. The momentum made me stumble forward, leaving me vulnerable for an attack, but it wasn't the man with the knife who I'd found in the room. It was Murdoc; or, to be more precise, a blood-soaked, pale and clammy-skinned Murdoc who was sitting limply propped against the wall.

At first I thought he was dead. There was so much blood on him and on the floor around him I could smell it—a metallic, yet organic tang that made my stomach do a lazy roll. Then he looked up at me and said, "Damn it, Russel, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

I was so relieved to see that he wasn't dead I didn't know what to say. I settled with saying the first thing that popped into my head, which turned out to be incredibly stupid. "Are you OK, man?"

"Oh, yes. I was just about to go and hit the clubs. Care to join me? Oh, wait. I forgot. I'm bleeding to death in a storage closet you idiot!" He shuddered and pressed his hands to his side before punctuating his outburst with: "Damn it."

I squatted down on the floor next to him and said, "Can I see where he got you?"

He looked like he wanted to shout at me again before he hesitantly moved his hands away from the area they were clutched over. I leaned in close to try and asses the damage only to discover that the wound was hidden underneath a balled-up towel that was so saturated with blood I couldn't even tell what color it was. Damn, I thought, eying the blood that was oozing through the already soaked towel. This is bad. OK. First things first. "We need to move before that guy comes through here. Can you walk?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

I swallowed back a sigh. If he's feeling well enough to act like an obnoxious jerk he's well enough to make it to my room, I decided. "Come on; let's go."

Using the wall behind him for support, Murdoc shakily started to stand up. He was about halfway there when he groaned and slumped against the wall, muttering a string of curses under his breath. I reached out to help him, but he batted my hand away before I could touch him.

"Keep your mitts off of me," he panted. "I'm fine."

He stayed hunched against the wall for a long time, panting like he was trying to catch his breath. I noticed as he stood there that there was another gash on his back. It wasn't bleeding as badly as the first one I'd seen, but it still looked pretty ugly. I grabbed a handful of towels off the shelf in front of me, hoping it would be enough to slow the bleeding down when we got to my room.

Once Murdoc was standing we started back to my room, him hobbling and sucking little gasps of air through his teeth and me keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn't fall down. We didn't hear or see any sign of the man with the knife the whole way there.

Author's Notes: I am back! And yes, this chapter is a bit shorter than the last few have been. I'm anticipating that next chapter will be on the shorter side, too. The one after that will make up for it, though. Promise. Thanks to everyone who reads, reviews, or adds this to favorites or alerts—it really makes my day to know that people enjoy this story, so please feel free to let me know what you think!

Next chapter: Siege