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thing reacted to the trap he’d set for it.
    He stepped forward and swung the pistol down, both hands locked around its grip. In his entire adult life, Dick had never hit anyone like that. The pistol’s butt slammed down against the back of the thing’s head with a solid thud, like a mallet striking a thick piece of wood. The force of the impact ran up Dick’s arm and vibrated in his skull.
    The pale monster fell onto Troy. Blood ran onto the floor, pooling around Troy’s legs, and Dick’s heart sank. He needed the freak alive, not bleeding out through a hole he’d knocked in its skull. He nudged it with his foot then pushed it off Troy.
    The thing’s eyes fluttered, and the only blood he could see was smeared around its mouth. “Fuck,” he whispered, “Troy.”
    He’d been too late. The thing had latched onto Troy’s throat and torn it clean through. Dick fell to his knees at Troy’s sides, gun dangling from his hand. “Oh, shit, Troy.”
    Amy came at Dick with both hands hooked into claws. He tried to rise, but she smashed him to the ground and pounced on him, straddling his chest. “You asshole! ” she growled, slashing at his face with her fingernails. She raked open a ragged wound on his cheek then another across the bridge of his nose, and another down his forehead.
    Randall called out from behind the camera’s light, confusion and panic at war in his voice. “You guys, stop. You guys .”
    Blood roared in Dick’s ears as adrenaline dropped into his bloodstream. He tried to push Amy away, but he didn’t have the leverage and her strength was fueled by raw rage, where he was drained by exhaustion and a deep, soul-sucking sorrow over Troy’s death. He’d had a plan, he’d fucking tried. It wasn’t his fault it had all gone wrong.
    She threw a hard backhand slap across his jaw, and for long seconds Dick couldn’t see and his head was filled by a Dopplering whine. His teeth clicked together and sliced away a sliver of his tongue, flooding his mouth with the rusty tang of blood. “Stop,” he moaned, raising his left hand to try and ward off Amy’s attacks.
    His attempt to defend himself pushed Amy further into her rage. Her eyes were wild, rolling in their sockets as she grabbed his head in both hands and lifted it off the floor. Dick could feel the depths of her anger, the intensity of it, through her hands. He saw his death as clear as he’d ever seen anything. Amy was going to smash his head against the stone floor until his skull shattered like an egg and his brains sloshed out.
    The blow never came. Amy’s head snapped backward, and she flew off Dick, arms and legs flailing as she arced away. She hit the ground with a meaty thud, and Dick heard the air gush from her lungs.
    Randall chased Amy with the light, chanting “Ohshitohshitohshit,” as he turned the camera to follow her.
    Dick shook the cobwebs off and scrambled to his feet, eyes glued to Amy’s receding form. The freak he’d tried to trap, the freak who’d killed Troy, was hauling her into the darkness.
    Dick raised the gun, took a deep breath, and fired.

12
    B lood ran down the tunnel’s wall, a crimson trail that dead ended at the pale freak curled on the cold floor. She was young, Dick didn’t figure her to be much more than sixteen, with skin the color of sour milk and wide-set eyes clenched against the unyielding light of Randall’s camera. Her breaths, harsh and shallow, hissed through jagged yellow teeth that curved out past her lips. Dick’s shot had gouged a bloody chunk from her shoulder.
    Amy stood next to Dick, hands briskly rubbing her arms as she chomped her gum. She spat a pink wad against the wall and unwrapped a new piece. She jammed the pink stick in her mouth and paced back and forth, chomping at her gum until her nerves calmed enough to speak. “Now what?”
    Dick motioned for Randall to get closer to the girl. Her ears were long and tapered to points, their interiors filled with complex circular