A second later, Aidan’s signal was answered by another whistle. This one more like a trill. “Keep left,” Aidan murmured. “Move!”
Lucy could barely see, but Aidan was pushing her into a run toward a deeper darkness, away from the ruckus. She thought they were heading for the short hallway she’d glimpsed before. She stumbled on, and just ahead she could hear Del and Sammy and the kids. One of the little ones was weeping. Small, feeble cries, like he didn’t have the strength to bawl. She ran into a solid body and stifled a gasp. Felt the drape of a cloak—Sammy—and heard the sound of him fumbling with a doorknob.
“Locked,” he said.
Del’s low voice came from farther up the hallway. “This one, too.”
They moved as quickly as they could through the darkness. Lucy shuffled her feet, expecting irrationally to fall into a hole at any moment.
And then, a little way past where the corridor made an acute turn, there was a recessed light, and she could see again. She looked back in the direction of the foyer. “They’ll be on us in a heartbeat,” Aidan said.
“Mrs. Reynolds said the outer doors would all be locked,” she said. “Or they’ll be rooms with no exit.”
“There’s a door to the basement somewhere here,” Del said. “I remember it from before. Here.” She threw it open and groped for the light switch. A bare bulb was set in the sloped ceiling. Old wooden stairs led steeply down, releasing the eye-watering smell of must and mold.
“We’re going down there?” Lucy said. She couldn’t help thinking of all those old slasher flicks. What was the foremost rule? Don’t go into the cellar….
“No choice, right?” Del said.
Lucy reluctantly agreed.
“There’s always a way out of a basement,” Sammy said. “A window or a coal chute or storm doors—something most people don’t think about it.” He started going down the narrow steps.
Lucy put out her hand and grabbed hold of his cloak. She looked at the scared kids clinging to Del’s fingers and put her lips to his ear so they couldn’t hear her. “Aren’t the dogs down there?”
She could hear whining, excited yaps. The barks echoed wildly.
“Yeah, I guess—but like Del said, no choice.”
Still Lucy hesitated. They didn’t know what to expect. It could be a dead end, and they had no way of protecting themselves except for her knife, Aidan’s hammer, and Del’s slingshot. Aidan pushed urgently against her back. “Hate to tell you, but the Sweepers are coming.”
And now she heard hoarse shouts and the scuffling of boots on the hard floors.
She hurried onto the stairs, grabbing a wooden railing, which bent under her weight. Behind her, Aidan pulled the door closed.
“Lock?” Del asked.
“Bolt, but one good kick will break it,” he said.
On the first step down, Lucy slipped. The railing pulled away from the wall with a screech of nails. Del’s hand shot out and gripped her elbow, saving her from a nasty spill. As soon as Lucy had regained her footing, the girl released her arm.
“Thanks,” Lucy said.
“Don’t mention it.” She held one kid firmly by the wrist. Lucy thought it was the girl, but she couldn’t be sure. The other one stumbled ahead with his arms outstretched. Both of them wore baggy gray pajamas and slippers. Both badly needed their hair washed. So much for the hot baths Dr. Lessing mentioned, she thought.
The stairs were steep but short. They found themselves in a large, concrete-floored space. Thick drifts of dust lay on the floor, tracked over by countless footprints. Steel-encased wiring stretched out in a lattice across the low ceilings, as did rusty pipes as thick as Lucy’s arm. She could hear the trickle of water pumped down from the cistern. Pink insulation puffed out of crumbling plaster board like masses of cotton candy. Stacks of soggy boxes lined the water-stained walls. It smelled of damp and mushrooms, and overwhelmingly of animals: mouse droppings, but also the close, thick smell of many dogs kept inside, the tang of urine and dander and fur.
Numerous corridors led off in different directions, each poorly lit and dusty. Lucy tried to orient herself, but she’d lost her sense of direction. She thought she could pinpoint where the dogs were kenneled, even though the echoing barks confused her.
“Any idea what’s down here?” Sammy asked Del. He’d lifted the little girl onto his back. She clung to him, her hair straggling in her face. Her eyelids drooped.
Del shook her head. “Besides canned goods and bulk food items? The dogs. A bunch of old boxes. Stuff left over from before the plague, I guess.”
Aidan, who had been hanging back near the stairs listening for the Sweepers, looked excited. “If they were getting big deliveries of food, then there’s probably a loading dock or something down here. We should head in that direction.”
Del shrugged helplessly. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s as big as a football field. I wandered down here for a couple of hours before Dr. Lessing—” She broke off, her cheeks reddening. Before Dr. Lessing convinced you to rat me out, Lucy thought, and then was a little ashamed of herself. They’d still be fighting a losing battle if it weren’t for Del.
She cleared her throat. She hated to say it, but it seemed only rational. “If they trucked in mass amounts of dog food, then they probably stockpiled it near the dog kennels. We can follow the sound of their barks.” She turned slowly, tracking the sound. They were subdued now, but in her mind she could see the dogs. She remembered the rottweiler leaping at her legs as she struggled to climb the tree, the thick froth of spit at the corners of its jaws. Three narrow halls stretched in front of her. They were lit with dim bulbs.
“Look down on the ground,” Aidan said. A jumbled trail of muddy footsteps led down the central one. “The middle way gets used a lot.” He squeezed Lucy’s hand. She moved into the hollow of his arm. A series of sharp thuds jolted them apart. Someone was trying to kick in the cellar door.
Exchanging panicked glances, the group crept down the narrow hall, moving as quickly as possible. Del soothed the kids with soft murmurs. The air was very still and dank. The acrid odor of urine and sawdust grew stronger, and the yelps of the dogs increased in volume.
They hurried toward the sound. Sammy ran ahead. His cloaked shadow leapt across the walls. The kid was attached to his back like a monkey.
They’d come a few hundred yards down the passageway, and still Lucy could heard the sound of wood splintering behind them and the buzz of voices. How many were there? Three or four? All of them?
Another volley of barks, louder and more excited.
They can smell us, Lucy thought with a thrill of fear. And then her mouth suddenly turned dry. They can smell me.
“Nearly there,” Aidan said.
The corridor twisted and then opened up. Wire cages lined one long wall. Dogs of every shape and size pressed against the mesh. Some threw their bodies against the doors or clawed frantically, hard enough to rip at their paws. The yelping was deafening.
“Can you see a door out?” Lucy yelled. She was transfixed by a large dog that was staring at her. She flicked her eyes away, trying not to challenge the animal. Its black lips lifted away from sharp white teeth and the dog began to howl. At once the rest of the dogs lifted up their snouts and began to howl, too.
Aidan pulled at her arm and she realized she’d been standing still. “Come on,” he said.
She tore her eyes away from the dog and moved across the room as quickly as she could, keeping her gaze on the ground under her feet and ignoring the rumble of growls, the clanging of dogs pushing against their metal doors to get to her.