247: Reality TV. With a Killer Twist . . . by Jim Brown

Author:Jim Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2002-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

VASSA ISLAND

“My shirt,” Dana yelled in the dark, shouting to be heard over the sound of the rats.

“Where are they? Where are they?” Pheodora screamed.

Dana reached out until she found Pheodora’s arm. “I tore my shirt.”

“Yeah – well I’m about to pee my pants.”

“No. A piece of my shirt was torn off on the way in. Remember? If we find the fabric, it will point toward the door.”

The scampering of the rats grew intensified – the sound of tiny pink claws on concrete.

“Too many, too many,” Pheodora mumbled.

Dana shook her arm. “Snap out of it. Feel around. Find that fabric.”

“But the rats!”

“Find it,” Dana shouted, using her mother voice, the one that told Jenna the time for negotiation was over. “Find it!”

Groping in the dark, Dana tried unsuccessfully to vanquish her image of the rats, gray and thin with hungry, sharp teeth stained red with blood. Had they feasted on the bodies? What would the virus do to an animal?

Twice she banged her leg against something. The skin was broken. A thin trail of blood rivered down her calf.

“Yes!” Pheodora shouted. “I found it. I found it.”

Dana locked on the sound of her friend’s voice and stumbled toward her. Something brushed across her foot. She jumped, barely swallowing the squeal. Her fingers touched Pheodora, then the broken bookcase with the torn fabric.

“That’s it. The door is three feet behind it.”

“How can you be sure of the direction?” Pheodora asked.

“I ripped my shirt because the boxes forced us through the narrow opening, just one way to go. Take it backwards and we’re at the door.”

And so are the rats.

Pheodora screamed. “Something brushed my leg.”

“Hurry,” Dana shouted. Bile rose in her throat as her shoulder hit something hard, a sword-strike of pain numbing her right arm. “Hurry,” she repeated.

Pheodora hit the wall. There was a sickening sound of solid wood. “It’s not here. It’s not here.”

Dana pushed her aside. She hammered the wall. Thump, thump, thump…

…rripped… She toppled forward, falling through the paper wall and spilling into the next room.

She still had her flashlight, which was now beaming brightly. Pheodora tumbled out behind her. “Shut the door!” she shouted. “Shut the fucking door.”

Dana stood up, pointing the light into the room from which they had just escaped. “No, wait.” The beam cleaved through the black. She scanned the floor and the wall.

“Shut the – where the hell are the rats?”

Though audible and sounding like an army from hell, there were no rats to be seen. “Look,” Dana said, her flashlight spotting and following a piece of fabric being pulled across the floor on a wire. “It was a trick, all a trick.”

A new sound, a thump-thud. No doubt the sound of the dead guy returning to his upright position. “Just a trick.”

She took the round object from her pocket and shone a light on her open palm. A bright red safety stone flashed in the light.

#

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