seen a thousand times. But Michael’s fingertips suddenly went numb with terror. His stomach flooded with ice. The yes-yes shattered in a single, flying instant.
The boy hung above them, knees hooked on the chandelier, like a kid on playground monkey bars.
No. That’s not real, Michael thought. No, no, no, my God that can’t be real!
Because he recognized, with one glance, the boy’s crooked, poor-kid haircut.
Cady Gibson, one month dead, still in his funeral suit, peered down at them, teeth peeled back into a smile like an arc of fiery bone.
Can’t be right. Doesn’t work like that. He just died in a coal-mine accident! How did he come back? HOW DID HE COME—
“Is that the Betrayer?” Patrick whispered.
The boy, inverted, swung from the light, spearing through the dark. He struck the wall with four quick limbs . . . and he did not fall. He clung to the wall; perched, the all-dark lamps of his eyes on them.
Doesn’t work like that!
Sections of his blond scalp hung loose in flaps. His brow was thin enough to see the skull. In his left temple was a ragged hole, perhaps the head wound that had taken his life when he fell in the mine. And the reason that he seemed to smile was because his lips had rotted off. Hi! Wanna play? I’m new here!
KILL IT! Michael thought. His gun was rising, rising. You have to kill it NOW!
Cady opened his mouth and out exploded Hell.
Two summers ago, Ron had lit a bottle rocket in an empty beer bottle that tipped over, and the firecracker screamed a hot bright slash past Michael’s head, close enough to scar his ear. That scorching cry was the only thing Michael could compare to what now came from this kid’s gray, quaking jaws.
The lenses of his machine-rifle scope shattered from the shriek. Michael recoiled, and at the same instant, involuntarily yanked the trigger: fire burst from the end of the barrel.
The creature dodged on the wall, flitting gravity-less from bullets like a snake inside a nightmare. His shrieking was a trapped siren.
The creature leapt over Michael, and landed on someone two times his own size. “Off!” Hank screamed in a hysterical mixture of revulsion and horror. “Off Jesus get off shit shit get it off get it off!” He spun wildly and jerked in a dance of terror.
The creature twisted upon him like flame.
Patrick grabbed Michael’s waist. “What the?!”
Holly cried out, lunged to help: stopped, then screamed her brother’s name as if her heart might break.
The creature’s jaws snapped. Hank began to weep.
Michael placed his finger on his trigger again, knowing it was too late, knowing that Hank was bitten, that Ron and Jopek had been right about him: he was too weak. But then a miracle happened.
As Cady arched his jaws for the bite, Hank, spinning, spinning, snarled Cady’s legs.
He hurled Cady at the wall. The creature flew, flailing like a beast kicked off a cliff.
Hank crowed, apparently as much in surprise as in triumph, and upon his face there was a savage joy.
Cady met the wall, but instead of the impact shattering him, he bent his legs to catch the momentum. Elegant. Cady launched back like a swimmer making a turn at the end of a pool: he launched back at Hank, jaws first.
Insanely, in that same moment, Jopek was running at Michael like a fullback, head down.
“Hey-back-get-back!” Michael shouted and raised the rifle and Jopek kept coming anyway, and Michael fired over his head. And Jopek stopped.
“Michael, shoot it!” Holly screamed. “Shoot it, MICHAEL, PLEASE SHOOT—”
The creature landed on Hank and roiled and hissed on him like spilled acid. “NAAAAAAA—” Hank screamed. He stumbled backward at the creature’s impact, and his head struck the wall with a crack! loud enough to make Michael feel sympathetic pain.
The monster went blurry with speed and it was hard to tell where Hank ended and where the monster began—
—feel your blood—
—and a thousand movie scenes of hostage standoffs flashed in Michael’s brain—
—feel it—
—each of them ending with the cop reluctantly lowering his gun.
Oh eff that, thought Michael.
The rifle slammed into Michael’s shoulder like a rapid fist.
His firepower was enormous, his aim flawless. Ropey blackness slung out of Cady as the bullets shredded his little-boy’s suit. The fusillade threw Cady off of Hank, and for one incredible instant, the boy-monster corkscrewed in the air. Cady struck the wall, and with a shriek—like a steel rod being fed through a buzz saw—he threw back his head, impossibly far. Unlike any other