I recognized the Camille Paglia quote, as I’d read all of her books, but I didn’t understand its significance in this case.
“What’s your name?” I shouted at the chained woman.
“Patricia Reid!”
“How did you get here, Patricia?”
“What?”
“How did you get in this room?”
“I was on the bus!”
“What bus?”
“The bus!” she said, nodding frantically.
I remembered Andrew Z. Thomas’s website, ALONEAGAIN posting in the forum.
Luther can do anything. He once swallowed a bus.
“What bus?” I screamed, but my words were drowned out by a sound that surpassed even the roar of the wind.
A deep, awful creaking.
Metal grinding against metal, like the sound of an old, rusty gate being opened.
Or a new, frozen gate.
A way out?
Patricia turned toward the sound, her face barely visible in the fleeting streaks of blue light that resembled lightning through the fog.
Up to this moment, the screams had been difficult to hear against the backdrop of wind and whatever machines were producing it. But the scream that rose up twenty feet away hit me loud and clear.
I’d never heard anything like it.
Human. Female. Beyond terror.
And so much pain in it.
A sharp, rusty taste coated the back of my throat.
I had started to open my mouth to ask Patricia if she knew the way out when I saw something slowly emerge out of the icy fog.
My first thought was Luther, but this couldn’t possibly be him.
This thing was huge, moving on all fours, lumbering like a bear…
Holy shit.
Not like a bear.
This thing was a bear.
The wide, waddling beast stalked toward us with strings of bloody drool escaping its jaws, which still chewed on something.
From fifteen feet away, it looked enormous.
No black or brown bear. This had to be a grizzly.
Patricia hadn’t said there was a girly in the cage. She’d said grizzly.
Luther had actually gotten a grizzly bear.
Patricia bolted off into the fog, the coil of chain at my feet unwinding, and then I heard a cry and a thump as it arrested her forward momentum and slammed her to the floor, the chain taut.
The bear took notice of her, its giant head swiveling her direction, and then rushed forward three steps and pounced.
It clamped its jaws around Patricia’s neck as her limbs flailed around her.
There was a terrible CRUNCH, and then Patricia was still.
The bear put a paw on her chest, tugging its head back, ripping her throat open. Then it stared back at me.
In the oncoming gust of wind, I could already smell the odor of its musk—wet fur and pungent urine and fresh blood.
I backpedaled into the mist, slowly at first, not wanting to incite a chase, but the bear accelerated to a lope, its great haunches pumping up and down, and I thought, I can’t believe I’m going to die like this. I’m from Chicago, for chrissakes.
The bear stopped.
In that erratic blue light, I could see its black nose wrinkling, catching competing scents in the swirling dark. The fur all down its neck was matted and slicked with gobs of gore.
I kept retreating, one step at a time, my heart thundering in my chest.
The monster lowered its head and looked at me, staring for a long, eerie moment through those beady eyes—eyes that reminded me of a pig’s. Around its neck was a thick, leather collar, with a metal box attached to the underside.
Then its head dropped, and I had a terrible premonition of what was about to happen.
I was right.
It charged with the deadly speed of a rolling barrel, surprising me that something so massive could move so fast.
I whipped around and ran as hard as I could, full bore into the freezing wind, one hand cupping my stomach as ice pellets drilled my face, my body. I couldn’t see a goddamn thing, even when the strobe sliced through the cloud.
If I’d blinked at the wrong time, I would’ve missed seeing the ladder.
Just caught a glimpse of it ten feet away out of the corner of my eye.
I turned and sprinted toward it, crashing into the old metal hard enough to bruise my arms.
It rose straight up the brick into darkness, and I grabbed the rungs above my head, hoisted myself up onto the freezing, lowest rung, and began to climb.
The bear crashed into the ladder with enough force to set the whole thing shaking.
I glanced down, saw it rear up onto its hind legs, roar, and swipe one of its claws, just missing my right leg but tearing the ladder off the lower prongs that bolted it into the wall.
I tightened my grip as the ladder shook, but kept climbing, now twelve feet off the ground, which was becoming lost in the swirl of fog and wind below.
The bear was gone.
I clung to the rungs, my legs shaking with exhaustion and fear. The ladder led to a hatchway, secured with a rusty padlock. Not the exit.
I had no desire to go back down onto the floor, but I couldn’t stay on this ladder. Already, the joints in my hands had begun to tighten, fingers going numb from the cold.
The noise of the wind machines was softer here, and the visibility better.
I looked around. When the strobes flashed, I thought I saw a door twenty-five or thirty yards away. I also saw two other people, chained to opposite walls. A woman and a man.
I didn’t recognize the man and was again selfishly relieved it wasn’t one of my friends.
Nothing else to do…
I descended.
Ten rungs put me back on the floor.
The grizzly roared, but I couldn’t pinpoint its location or distance amid the gusts of wind. I heard another terrified cry for help—a cry that was silenced in midbreath. Patricia had said there were four people in the room. By my count, the bear had already gotten three.
If I was to save the fourth, I needed a weapon. Maybe there was one in the next room.
I must’ve pulled a hamstring running because I felt a twinge down the back of my left leg as I jogged toward the door, pushing through thick clouds of fog and a torrent of sudden wind that nearly knocked me on my ass.
Breathless, I stumbled into the door, grabbed the handle, and turned it down.
Nothing happened.
I waited for another moment of darkness to pass, and when the next burst of light came, I saw the keypad. It had been installed upside-down.
Punched in 666, waited for the green light, but it blinked red instead.
Had I keyed it in wrong?
I tried the number again, made sure I got it right, and got another red light.
Think, think, think.
Shit.
It’s upside down. The number 6 upside down is 9.
I tried 999.
Red light.
What was I missing?
There’d been a plaque in that house that exploded. CIRCLE 1: LIMBO 666.
There had also been a plaque in this room, around Patricia’s neck. But it hadn’t contained any numbers on it. Just the word SIZZLE in capital letters.
I heard the grizzly growl again.
Closer than before.
Followed by another agonized scream. The final victim.
Final, except for me.
No time to stand here and brown my pants. I needed to keep moving.
I trailed one hand across the brick and started walking along the wall.
With Luther in my ear, I’d been distracted on my approach to the warehouse and had no real concept of its dimensions.
It seemed to take years to reach the intersection with the next wall. I turned the corner, waited for another burst of light, and saw smooth, unadorned brick for the next fifteen yards—no sign of another plaque anywhere.
I picked up the pace, jogging now, the pain in my hamstring expanding and intensifying.
A new scream grabbed my attention, and I stared out into the raging wind and ice, saw a half-second glimpse of the illuminated grizzly feasting on someone thirty feet away, its jaws buried deep in their chest.
The next decent jolt of light glimmered off something shiny hanging on the wall up ahead.