The Mall (22 page)

And he waited.

“So did you catch the Astros game the other night?”

Chance squeezed his eyes shut in frustration.
 
That idiot!
 
You don’t ask questions!
 
Silently, he prayed he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and imitate his voice answering.

“Well, I saw it and you know what I think?” Jesse came back loudly, his voice growing as his obvious anxiety grew.
 
“I think those bastards are gonna blow another season.
 
I can tell just by the way Biggio is swinging the bat.”

Chance shut his mouth and took slow, even breaths through his nose.
 
He could clearly hear footsteps now that Jesse’s voice started to trail away.
 
It was coming closer, whatever it was.

“It’s like after that defeat in LA, the spirit just got sucked out of the team, like they didn’t even want it anymore, y’know?”

Clearly now, Chance could hear the lift and fall of the shoes, the owner sounding as if he were trying to create as little noise as possible.
 
The source of that sound was almost on him now and he could no longer distinguish the individual words of Jesse.
 
It was simply an indecipherable drone of dialogue—no more coherent than his typical conversation, Chance thought with detached amusement.

What was he going to do when the other got within reach?
 
Jump him (or it)?
 
Let out a yell to scare him off balance,
then
jump him?
 
Maybe he should just confront him and ask him what he thought he was doing following them?
 
But then that led to the obvious question of what the two of them were doing here as well.

Before he could clearly choose a course of action, the owner of the shoes was between him and Jesse.

Chance silently cursed himself.
 
He slowly turned his head and could see Jesse’s dim pin-light floating like a firefly in the dark, just before the shape blocked it from his view.

His muscles stood locked in place, incapable of movement, afraid of making a sound and giving away his presence.

Must wait, he thought.
 
Just a few moments more and I’ll follow at a safe distance, so he won’t hear me.

Chance reached down and steadied the board resting on his leg with both hands, trying to ignore the sudden cramp in his right calf.
 
Carefully, he redistributed his weight to his left and pain flared through his leg muscle like the tiny teeth of a terrier.
 
Seizing the calf with one hand with the intention of massaging out the cramp, he felt his balance waver.
 
His body started to tip and the board began to slide down his leg.
 
Urgently, he went to one knee with a solid collision that reverberated through his entire body and caused his teeth to come together with an audible “clack.”

It was the only sound he’d made during the whole awkward maneuver, but it was just enough to attract the attention of their shy admirer.

Chance looked up and could see for the first time with sufficient distance--from both the dark shape and the pin-light Jesse held--that the figure was small, diminutive in fact.

It’s just a kid, Chance thought as he rose from his squat, all his lower muscles protesting at once.
 
He grunted and that was all the excuse the figure needed.

He bolted.

“Jesse!” Chance yelled, breaking into a run after him.
 
“Now!”

Trying as he could to locate the kid in the musty gloom, Chance took his eyes off Jesse’s pin-light.
 
For a split second before the inevitable impact, Chance remembered his minor league coach’s almost religious mantra that good players “never ever take their eye off the ball.”
 
As much as he’d hated Coach “Pee-Pants” Parker, he realized that this would have been an excellent opportunity to have heeded his advice, as he and Jesse plunged head-long into each other in the darkness, their skateboards clattering off to both sides of them.

Having simply stepped off to one side just before the impact, the figure that had been following them made a sound of sympathetic regret deep in his throat as Chance and Jesse rolled off of each other, both clutching their heads.

“Sorry,” the kid kept repeating.
 
“Sorry.”

Chance opened his eyes and blinked at the tiny figure hovering over them, his outline more distinctive now that they were closer to the light coming from the entrance to the next tram station about fifty yards away.
 
He was still having problems focusing his eyes however.
 
No matter how many times he blinked, he kept seeing a second figure, a larger figure just behind the first.
 
It seemed to hover over Jesse, who was moaning and rolling in the darkness next to him.
 

Chance opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t get his lungs to produce a breath, all of it having been knocked out by the impact.
 
He sucked in lungful after lungful like a dehydrated man at a water fountain, but it was too late.

The second figure came sharply into focus, lifting a four-foot long object above its head.
 
Chance had only enough energy to point.
 
The smaller figure spun and disappeared into the inky blackness of the shadows.

The instant before the raised object came down atop his skull, Chance realized that it was Jesse’s own skateboard.
 
The noise it made, amplified in the enclosed space, sounded to Chance like an egg cracking.

Jesse made only one sound, indistinguishable from a sigh before the enormous figure raised the board again.
 
He brought it down again and again, each time with more force, almost as if he was gaining strength with each motion.

Chance took one glance down and in the tiny pool of light cast by the dropped pin-
light,
he could see a single wide, unblinking eye, perfectly captured in its dim luminescence.

His muscles taking over for his brain, Chance bolted, following the now familiar sound of the other’s footfalls.
 
The tiny figure, he could see, already had a good head start down the tunnel as he dashed toward the only source of light.

Suddenly his progress stopped and Chance could feel something holding him, the tail of his baggy t-shirt stretching to its limits.
 
He pulled with all his strength,
then
gave a sudden unpredictable twist.
 
The figure seemed to take a step forward and Chance heard a distinctive sizzling sound—the sound of skateboard wheels.
  
Next,
came
the thud of a heavy object hitting the concrete floor of the tunnel, an exclamation of pain, and Chance was free again.

Owen didn’t remember scrambling up the platform to the
subterranean
level of the Mall or through the open plasti-steel partition.
 
It was almost as if he had been transported from the darkness into the light, instantaneously.

His legs had had a mind of their own, almost like two machines with a pre-assigned program to flee.
 
He had started to doubt if he were even capable of stopping them, when he heard the scream.

All of a sudden, he could feel his legs again, his tiny firm muscles tingling with the furious exertion he had just put on them.
 
He felt weak and foggy.

Maybe this is all dream, he thought for a moment.
 
I fell asleep in the theater watching
Back to the Future
a second time and now I’m dreaming all this.
 
As he strained to hear the dialogue of Michael J. Fox, the older kid’s voice rung out again—this time louder--shattering all illusions.

“Help!” the kid cried over and over.
 
“Help me!”

Owen turned and found the eyes of the older kid, maybe as old as sixteen, he couldn’t tell.
 
He wasn’t good with ages.
 
All he knew was that he wasn’t quite a grown-up like the man in the arcade.
 
He was, just like him, a kid.

He watched as the other slid to a stop a few yards from where he was standing at the foot of the escalator leading to the upper levels of the Mall
, just panting and staring with wide, bulging eyes—the sort of eyes he only seen before on the faces of zoo animals
.
 
Terrified, trapped animals.
 
In the dim emergency lights along the wall, Owen could see speckles of red on his forehead and down along one cheek.

It was the blood of that other kid who had been with him… and that other kid was still in the tunnel with the big dark thing.

The sight of the blood crystallized the reality of what he was experiencing.
 

This was no dream.

Stopping at the foot of the escalator, Chance turned away from the little kid and stared at the open plasti-steel door leading down into the dark hole.
 
A dim sound came from within, growing louder.
  
It was the footsteps of something big, growing closer, each step amplified by the natural acoustics of the tunnel until his legs began to tremble in fear.

It’s not human, he thought.

Then a shadow appeared on the far wall of the tram tunnel and he could see the top of a head appear at the entrance, then one hand and the other gripping the edge of the platform, each one stained red.

It rose from the depths, its eyes hallow but intense as they scanned methodically from left to right, capturing all and recording every minute detail of the scene before it.

The thing pulled itself up into the light, its face covered with swatches of blood.
 
It eyes rolled and fixed on them.

For the first time, Chance recognized that face.
 
It was the security guard that Jesse had taunted back at the Wheel of Time Ferris wheel.
 
Or at least, it used to be.
 
Somehow, he had changed in a fundamental way.
 
Whatever sat behind those eyes—those cold, mechanical eyes—no longer appeared human.

When something grabbed his arm and yanked him backwards, Chance came close to letting go of his barely controlled bladder.
 
It was then that he realized that the kid was still with him.
 
He was not alone and that momentarily gave him renewed strength.
 
He stumbled a few steps back in a dreamy daze, his eyes still unable to detach from the creature rising from the hole.

All that blood.
 
All that came out of Jesse, Chance couldn’t stop thinking.
 
He’s still down there and…

“C’mon!” the kid screamed in his ear, the sound shocking him with its volume, making his whole head ring.

Cora began to scream, a sound high and piercing, pitched at a frequency honed through thousands of years of evolution to assault the mature human ear in just such a way that made it impossible to ignore.
 
At the sound, every thought and inclination deserted Lara’s mind and the moral imperative “Protect the child,” pulsed like a red neon sign through every fiber of her body.