Stung - By Bethany Wiggins Page 0,4
in the womb. He glares at me and aims in my direction. I turn and continue down the littered, deserted road.
When I get far enough from Jacqui’s house that I can no longer see the boy, I stop. With the sun gone, the air fuses with twilight and darkness creeps in, unsettling my nerves, giving me the impression that something hides in the shadows. Something teases my ears. I pause and survey the decrepit houses haunting the street. I peer into the black, glassless windows and feel as if someone is watching me. I pray I’m imagining it.
Shelter. I need to find shelter. I step over trash, over bleached human bones, over tree branches and tumbleweeds and empty plastic bottles strewn across the road. With every step the approaching night grows darker, making it harder to see, harder to tell the difference between trash and road. Harder to tell the difference between real and imagined.
A dog barks behind me, and the desire to find shelter makes me frantic.
I run, dodging trash, and jump over a mangled car door. When I land, my knees buckle beneath my weight. I squat on my heels and rest my hands on my knees. Panting, I lick my peeling lips, but my tongue holds no moisture. I need water almost as much as I need air. More than I need shelter.
Another dog joins the first, a distant barking that echoes down the road, driving me to action. I stand unsteadily and face the silent houses. There has to be water in one of them. Maybe left in a toilet tank. Or forgotten in a teakettle. Or caught in the coils of a garden hose. Ignoring the instincts that warn me to stay out of the houses, I walk toward the closest one, staring at the gaping windows.
I step up onto the sidewalk and pause. My skin tightens as if something is watching me, like the darkness will devour me if I take another step.
More dogs start barking. A gun explodes, echoing like thunder. I turn and look down the dark road toward Jacqui’s house, and the gun explodes again. Raised voices fill the night, mixed with the frantic barking. Someone screams—a deep, male scream—and a gun goes off again. And then there is nothing but the ringing in my ears.
Something grabs my arm and I am yanked backward, tripping over trash and the curb and my own feet. I scream, but my throat is too dry to muster up anything more than a croak.
“Shut up!” someone snaps, the person dragging me to the middle of the street, to the black ring of an old tire. The person, a short wisp of a human—a child—releases my arm and shoves the tire away. Beneath it sits a barely visible manhole. Metal echoes hollowly as the lid is slid aside, and then the shadow launches itself into the hole in the road and disappears. I peer down into the blackness and cringe at the dead-animal-and-raw-sewage smell wafting up.
A pale hand darts out of the opening and grabs my ankle.
“Hurry up and jump, or you’ll be worse than dead!” the child hisses, digging ragged nails into my skin. And then I hear a new sound. Footsteps. Lots. Pounding against pavement faster than my frantic heart pounds against my chest. Getting closer.
“Fine! Stay up there. Freaking idiot!”
The manhole starts scraping back into place as the footsteps thump closer. I peer down the dark road toward the sound of the footsteps and see a hoard of shadows approaching—big, broad-shouldered shapes silhouetted by starlight.
I swallow, step, and plummet into darkness.
Chapter 3
I soar through darkness but only for a heartbeat. My feet impact the ground and sink, the squishy floor absorbing the jolt from my fall. It is like standing at the edge of the ocean and letting the incoming tide wash the sand over my feet until I can’t pull them out without wiggling them loose. I move my feet and the ground squelches.
Above me, stars shine in a sphere, a halfmoon, a crescent, and then there’s darkness as the manhole locks back into place, the child panting with the effort of it. My feet squelch again, and the child leaps to the ground and grabs me, nails digging into my shoulder and pulling me down.
Lips are on my ear, and I can’t tell which smells worse—the child or the air. “Shut up or I’ll kill you,” it whispers. A small hand comes over my mouth, and something cold and rough slides