“This place” was a hollowed out earthen room sitting in the middle of a nest of tunnels that seemed to run under the property, or at least Zone Five. I had only gotten terrified glimpses of other tunnels as I was drug past them, but I know I saw more than ten, which led me to think they were deep and widespread. My guess was that the room Oscar had taken me to was somewhere between the Red House and the Grey House, but that was only a guess. What was certain was, even with all I had encountered recently, that room was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen.

The walls were of brown earth, packed tight and ran through with roots and writhing worms, though most of those were on whatever was covering much of the bare dirt. Thick, oozing slabs of what looked like rotting meat were pressed into place here and there along the floor, walls, and ceiling. All of it covered in a clear, viscous mucus that seemed to bind the corrupted flesh together, and between the smell from the meat and that fluid, I had begun gagging thirty feet before we even reached the room. As we cleared the threshold, my horror and revulsion at my surroundings began to dull my nausea as my understanding grew.

This meat…much of it was made from people. Among the tufts of animal fur and snouts, I would see a hand or a foot or a face here or there. A couple of them I even recognized as derelicts or junkies we had run off repeatedly over the last few months. Had Oscar done all this?

As though reading my mind, Oscar’s smile widened. “No, I can’t take credit for all this. The Rot doesn’t like to dirty its hands too much—that’s what it’s got people like me for, you see—but it is capable of quite a bit. And I know, a lot of this seems strange to you. Crazy even. But that’s just because you haven’t gotten to really see what all the Rot can show you. It’s told me about those nasty little things we’ve seen skittering around. How they’re trying to interfere with everything.” He ran a finger appreciatively through the slime on a nearby wall before licking it with closed eyes. “With our development.”

My head was still throbbing, but I craned my head up at this last. Maybe I could get him to tell me something I could exploit. Something that would help me escape or convince him to turn me loose. “You mean the rats?”

Oscar chuckled. “Yeah, the rats. They’re annoying little fucks. But that’s okay. Now that we have you back and in this place where the Rot is strong, we can correct the damage they did and get you back on the path.”

“The path to what?”